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      Pam Bondi denies knowing Ice agents wore masks during raids despite video evidence

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      The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.Challenged at a Wednesday Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.“I do know they are being doxxed … they’re being threatened,” she told Peters. “Their families are being threatened.”Bondi’s protestations appeared to strain credibility given the attention the masked raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have attracted on social media and elsewhere.Civil rights campaigners and democracy experts have criticised the raids as evocative of entrenched dictatorships and police states, and say it is a warning sign that the US is descending into authoritarianism.Peters said he understood officers’ concerns at being doxxed but said the failure to wear identifying insignia endangered both themselves and detainees.“The public risk being harmed by individuals pretending to be immigration enforcement, which has already happened,” he told Bondi. “And these officers also risk being injured by individuals who think they’re basically being kidnapped or attacked by some unknown assailant.“People think: ‘Here’s a person coming up to me, not identified, covering themselves. They’re kidnapping.’ They’ll probably fight back. That endangers the officer as well, and that’s a serious situation. People need to know that they’re dealing with a federal law enforcement official.”Bondi reiterated her proclamation of ignorance, saying: “It sounds like you have a specific case and will be happy to talk to you about that at a later time, because I’m not aware of that happening.”She turned the tables later in the hearing after Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee, condemned Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and the Democratic vice presidential candidate in last year’s election, for comparing Ice agents with Nazi Gestapo officers.“This is dangerous for our agents, it’s wrong, and it cuts against and it undercuts the rule of law,” said Hagerty, who invited Bondi to explain how she intended to tackle “leftwing radicals” who he said were attacking Ice agents.In response, the attorney general said that it was protesters who were concealing their identities when assailing officers.“Those people are the ones who have really been wearing the mask and trying to cover their identities,” she said, citing the recent demonstrations in Los Angeles, against which Donald Trump deployed national guard units. “We’ve been finding them. We have been charging them with assault on a federal officer.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska who has some voiced criticism of the Trump administration, told Bondi that her constituents were worried that resources had been transferred to immigration crackdowns at the expense of tackling violent crime.“We don’t have much of an Ice presence in Alaska,” she said. “All of a sudden, we’re now on the map. We have those that are being detained in our local jail that were flown up to the state several weeks ago to be detained up there.”She also cited the case of a restaurant owner who had been detained by Ice agents after living in the Alaskan city of Soldotna for 20 years. “His children are all integrated into the community,” Murkowski said.“The specific ask is whether or not immigration enforcement is being prioritized over combatting violent crime. And senator, before you walked in, I think senators on both sides of the aisle shared that same concern.”Bondi replied: “It is not and it will not. A lot of it does go hand in hand though, getting the illegal aliens who are violent criminals out of our country.” More

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      Mamdani’s defeat of Cuomo offers Democrats a path out of the wilderness

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      The party was on its knees. It failed to beat Donald Trump, a twice impeached convicted felon, and lost both chambers of Congress. Since November, Democrats have been searching for a path out of the wilderness. On Tuesday, they found one.But instead of celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York mayoral primary election, the first major Democratic contest since Trump’s win, many in the party establishment went into panic mode.Mamdani, 33, a self-described democratic socialist who would be the first Muslim mayor of America’s biggest city, represents a unique threat to the entitled elites, gerontocrats and consultants who have helped take Democrats’ approval rating to a record low of 29%.His defeat of Andrew Cuomo, a 67-year-old from a political dynasty vying to come back from a sexual harassment scandal, could hardly have been better scripted as a pivot point for Democrats who ruined their brand by closing ranks to cover up concerns over former president Joe Biden’s decline.View image in fullscreenCuomo, bankrolled by corporate donors and endorsed by former president Bill Clinton and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, personified the twitching tail of a dying animal. Mamdani, an aspiring rapper turned state politician backed by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow New Yorker, represented a dare to imagine what a post-Trump future might look like.“What’s happening in NYC is a blaringly loud message to those in the Dem establishment who still cling to old politics, recite focus-grouped talking points, and are too afraid to say what needs to be said,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to former president Barack Obama.It was a campaign that triangulated ground game, digital style and policy substance. Mamdani was a shoe leather candidate who put himself all over the city, talked to countless voters, projected optimism without sounding preachy and had thousands of volunteers knocking on doors multiple times.He also learned from Ocasio-Cortez’s mastery of the attention economy. Where other Democrats seem contrived and cringy on social media, Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez are of a generation that swims naturally in such waters, proving that you cannot fake authenticity.Born in Uganda to a family of Indian descent, he is a cosmopolitan and charismatic New Yorker. In November, a week after Trump’s victory, he went to Queens and the Bronx with a microphone and interviewed working class New Yorkers about why they voted for Trump or did not vote at all. A video of the exchanges has 2.7m views on the X social media platform.View image in fullscreenOn New Year’s Day, dressed in full suit and tie save for bare feet, he ran into freezing waters off Coney Island then strolled along the beach talking policy and tweeted some pleasingly bad puns: “I’m freezing … your rent as the next mayor of New York City. Let’s plunge into the details.”For all Democrats’ angst over messaging, none if it matters if the policies fail to resonate. The Democratic party has come to be seen as the party of the college-educated elites, something that Trump, with no sense of self-irony as a millionaire New Yorker, has exploited to maximum effect with blue-collar voters.But Mamdani evidently struck a chord in a city feeling the pinch of the affordability crisis. The average Manhattan rent now stands at $5,000 a month. His proposals include freezing rent for many New Yorkers, free bus service and universal childcare paid for by new taxes on the rich.When Trump identified some of the frustrations and offered fake populism, he was twice rewarded with the White House. When Mamdani offers solutions that would be regarded as mainstream in many European countries, he is demonised as an extremist. On Wednesday, the New York Times newspaper characterised him as “running on a far-left agenda” while the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post declared: “NYC SOS. Who will save city after radical socialist batters Cuomo in Dem mayoral primary?”Mamdani showed the value of fearlessness. A staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, he has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide”, joined a hunger strike outside the White House calling for a ceasefire and championed the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University who spent more than three months in detention on the orders of a federal judge.View image in fullscreenCuomo and his allies’ efforts to portray Mamdani as antisemitic fell flat. There is a lesson for Democrats who denied a Palestinian American a speaking slot at their national convention last year and saw Kamala Harris lose to Trump in the Arab-majority suburb of Dearborn in Michigan, potentially costing her the crucial swing state of Michigan.Expect the Democratic establishment to fight back, just as Hillary Clinton did against senator Bernie Sanders’s insurgent candidacy in 2016 (Sanders endorsed Mamdani). They fear the loss of the control they have long enjoyed. They also fear that Republicans and rightwing media will cast Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez and the rest as radical Marxists, as sure to lose elections as Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn.Matt Bennett, a cofounder of the centrist thinktank Third Way, wrote on social media that it is “dangerous to believe a NYC Dem primary offers a roadmap for winning” in swing or conservative places and urged Democrats to follow moderates, “not the siren call” of socialism. He added: “Mamdani diagnosed the right problem: the affordability crisis facing the working class. But he has the wrong solutions: his ideas can’t work and would make matters worse.”View image in fullscreenThere will certainly be much debate over whether New York City, a Democratic stronghold with many distinct characteristics, is a useful template for candidates in cities, towns and rural areas the length and breadth of the country. “As New York goes, so goes the nation,” is not really a thing.Even so, after six months of anguished soul searching, Democrats now have one answer. Some don’t like it. Mamdani – likely be the favourite in November’s general election for mayor – signifies a generational change and rebuke to a party establishment grown complacent and hypocritical in its deference to figures such as the Clintons, Biden and Cuomo despite their obvious flaws.The odds of Ocasio-Cortez, currently 35, running for and winning the Democratic nomination in 2028 just got shorter. It is a leap of political imagination for America that progressives would savour – but so, too, would the Republican election machine. More

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      Parenting is not just for pronatalists: the progressive case for raising kids

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      A few months ago, I was at a playground just a couple of blocks from our home in Washington DC, when a mom I barely knew turned to me mid-conversation and said: “I think I might be the deep state.”It was mid-March. Doge was tearing through the city, dismantling federal agencies at dizzying speed. Donald Trump, re-elected on a promise to “shatter the deep state”, had fired thousands of longtime civil servants in his first weeks back in office.The job cuts have been top of mind in Washington. Most of my kids’ playdates these days begin with nap schedule updates and end in quiet dread.It isn’t just jobs. International students are being deported. Measles outbreaks are creeping closer. The climate crisis is at our doorstep: blizzards one week, wildfires the next. Every day brings fresh threats to public safety, democracy and the planet itself.“It makes you wonder,” she said as we pushed our daughters on the swings, “what kind of world did we bring our kids into?”View image in fullscreenIt’s a question I can’t stop thinking about. I’ve lived in and reported on parenting across five continents, and what continues to astonish me is how uniquely punishing early parenthood is in the west, especially for those most committed to building a fairer world. Progressives are rightly vocal about how hard it is to raise kids, but too often, we forget to make the case for why it’s still worth it.In the face of so many overlapping crises, the decision to have children can feel reckless, or worse, like an act of denial. But parenting can also be something else entirely: a stubborn act of hope.Raising children offers a crash course in progressive values. It’s a way of tying ourselves more deeply to the future, of feeling the stakes of climate change, inequality and injustice – not as distant headlines, but as urgent matters affecting someone whose lunch you just packed.By failing to make a case for children and families, the left has surrendered these issues to the pronatalist right. We’ve handed over the “family values” agenda, allowing it to be defined by a rigid, exclusionary vision of parenthood.Project 2025, the policy blueprint shaping much of Trump’s current agenda, pledges to “restore” a Christian nationalist view of the family unit as “the centerpiece of American life”.Figures such as JD Vance and Elon Musk, as well as the conservative Heritage Foundation, have declared childbearing a moral and civic duty. Some have even proposed medals and cash for mothers. At this year’s March for Life, Vance called for “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them.View image in fullscreenWhen we see child rearing as a private project, we forget that many of the movements that shaped the left – civil rights, labour, climate justice – were powered by people who looked at the next generation and decided they were worth fighting for. In his most well-known speech, Martin Luther King Jr didn’t just dream of a better world for himself, he dreamed that his four little children would grow up in a nation where they would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. His vision was rooted in legacy.That’s what parenting does. It gives shape to our politics. It puts flesh on our ideals. It forces us to ask: what are we building and who is it for? Raising children doesn’t distract from that work; it clarifies it.Of course, parenthood isn’t the only path to caring about the future – but it makes it harder to look away. It compels us to feel the weight of policy decisions in our bones. It blows open our empathy and softens the edges of individualism. Suddenly, every child becomes your child. Every policy becomes personal. You start noticing the stroller-unfriendly sidewalks, the unaffordable summer camps, the lack of paid leave – not just for yourself, but for all parents.There’s science behind this shift. Researchers have found that becoming a parent activates a “parental caregiving network” in the brain, lighting up areas tied to empathy, emotional processing and social understanding. It happens in both mothers and fathers. For dads especially, the extent of this neurological change is closely tied to how much hands-on caregiving they do. In other words, caregiving rewires our brains to connect more, care more and notice the needs of others. At its best, parenting strengthens the very instincts progressives say they want to build society around.I’ve seen this empathy in action. Before I had kids, I was reporting on the Rio Olympics and walking the beach one night with a colleague, a mother of two, when we were approached by a group of children begging for money. I clutched my purse and walked faster. But my co-worker slowed down, took off her blazer and wrapped it around a shivering child about her son’s age. “Get home,” she said gently. “Your mom is probably looking for you.”I could tell right away we were operating on different levels of empathy. She saw that child as an extension of her own kids. I wasn’t there yet. But eventually, I got there, too.When I finally became a mother, I began to see stories I covered differently. Now, when I interview parents who’ve lost children to gun violence in Brazil’s favelas, I understand their grief in a new way. I report with deeper urgency and deeper care, seeing myself in their shoes, and my children in theirs.View image in fullscreenThis rewiring of the brain creates a political opening. It expands our sense of who counts as “us”. It softens the boundary between self and other. In doing so, it changes how we interpret harm, not as something happening “out there”, but as something personal, urgent and unacceptable.Yet, the demands of caregiving can pull us away from political life. A 2022 UK study found that parenthood temporarily reduces political participation among mothers. The reason is obvious: we’re exhausted. Calling your representatives between diaper changes feels impossible. I get it. Some days, I fantasize about deleting all my news apps, retreating into a cozy, apocalypse-adjacent bubble with my kids, and calling it a day.View image in fullscreen“Generally, I think parents are the worst at advocating for themselves because they are just too damn tired. It’s one more thing in the lives of people who already have too much expected of them,” Jennifer Glass, professor at the University of Texas’s department of sociology and Population Research Center and an expert on parental happiness, told me.But parenting doesn’t have to distract from political work. It can fuel it. When we do organize, our sharpened parental empathy can translate into political power. Around the world, it’s progressive movements, often driven by the demands of parents, that have expanded what family support can look like. In Sweden, it was working mothers who pushed for what became the world’s most generous parental leave system, eventually adding incentives for men to take their fair share. In Singapore, multigenerational bonds are built into policy: the government gives housing grants to families who live near grandparents and tax breaks to elders who help with childcare. In France, parents helped lead the 1968 protests that birthed a cooperative childcare system.But when progressives step back from family values, conservatives fill the void.This is not a uniquely American phenomenon. According to the United Nations, the share of countries with explicit pronatalist policies has nearly tripled since 1976. But these visions often center on traditional gender roles and narrow definitions of family, excluding anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. We shouldn’t let the only cultural narrative around parenting come from those who see it as a tool for enforcing hierarchy and control.Progressives must also fight for a say in the values shaping the next generation. A 2023 Pew survey found that 89% of teenagers raised by Democratic parents identify with or lean toward the Democratic party. For Republican parents, the number is nearly as high, at 81%.That suggests political identity is often passed down through environment and lived experience: what kids hear at the dinner table, what they see modeled at home and which communities shape their worldview.From there, each new generation brings fresh ideas about justice. Social progress doesn’t only happen by changing the minds of the old; it happens through generational renewal. Throughout the country, youth raised in the shadow of mass shootings are leading the charge for gun reform. In Montana, young people took the government to court over climate change and won. In Sweden, Greta Thunberg sparked a global climate movement at 15.These movements exist because someone raised those children to believe they had not just the right, but the responsibility, to shape the world around them. But if we step back from parenting, or treat it as apolitical, we leave that space wide open.View image in fullscreenThe right is more than ready to fill it. That’s why they’re fighting so hard to control what children are taught, which books they read, whose families are visible in their classrooms and which identities are allowed to exist.This is the moment for the left to reclaim family as a public good. Progressives shouldn’t just defend the right to abortion, we must fight for people’s ability to have families and raise them with dignity. That means paid leave, universal childcare, affordable healthcare and a livable planet.It also means rejecting the caricature that progressives are a party of “childless cat ladies” while conservatives corner the market on family values. We are, and always have been, the natural home of pro-family policy.After all, children tether us to the future, but also to each other. Progressive values thrive in that space of interdependence, where no one is expected to go it alone. Caring for kids – whether as parents, educators, neighbors or policymakers – demands a communal ethic of care.I’ve seen this ethic in action across the world. While writing my book, Please Yell at My Kids, I spent years studying how families around the world raise children in community. In the Netherlands, children as young as eight walk themselves to school. Parents trust that if they need help, a community member will step in. In Denmark, babies nap unattended in strollers outside cafes – not because parents are careless, but because they trust the society around them. In Mozambique, where formal support systems often fail, mothers rely on each other for food, childcare and safety, transforming neighborhoods into extended families. These cultures aren’t perfect, but they understand that raising a child isn’t a private endeavor. It’s a collective one.Some understandably hesitate to bring children into a world on fire. Others worry that parenting means stepping back from activism or ambition. But for many, becoming a parent doesn’t dilute that drive; it crystallizes it. Climate change isn’t just a policy failure – it’s the air your child will breathe. Gun violence isn’t abstract – it’s a possibility you carry every time you drop them off at school. The broken systems you tolerated suddenly become intolerable when your child has to navigate them, too.This isn’t about idealizing parenthood. It’s about refusing to surrender this human experience to those who would use it to divide us. So yes, the world is on fire. But refusing to bring children into it won’t put the flames out. What may, perhaps, is raising a generation bold enough to rebuild it.

      Marina Lopes is the author of Please Yell at My Kids: What Cultures Around the World Can Teach You About Parenting in Community, Raising Independent Kids, and Not Losing Your Mind, out now More

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      Union leaders’ exit from DNC exposes ‘mind-boggling’ tensions inside Democratic party

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      As the Democratic party fights to rebuild from a devastating election defeat, the abrupt exit of the presidents of two of the nation’s largest labor unions from its top leadership board has exposed simmering tensions over the party’s direction.Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders quit the Democratic National Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to “open the gates” and win back the support of working-class voters. Ken Martin, the new DNC chair, and his allies told the Guardian that the party was focused on doing exactly that.Weingarten, president of the 1.8-million-member American Federation of Teachers, resigned after Martin did not renominate her to serve on the DNC’s important rules committee. In her resignation letter, Weingarten wrote that education, healthcare and public service workers were in “an existential battle” due to Donald Trump’s attacks and that she did not “want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent”.Saunders, the long-time president of the 1.3-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also issued a critical statement. “These are new times. They deserve new strategies,” he said. “We must evolve to meet the urgency of the moment. This is not a time to close ranks or turn inward … It is our responsibility to open the gates [and] welcome others.”View image in fullscreenSeveral DNC officials asserted that the two departures were a “tempest in a teapot”, insisting that Martin is working to have the DNC welcome more people and battle against Trump. Weingarten and Saunders evidently felt sore that their candidate for DNC chair, Ben Wikler, the head of Wisconsin’s Democratic party, lost to Martin, the officials suggested.Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, said the resignations were an inarguable blow to the DNC.“When something like this becomes public, there’s clearly a spotlight on it,” he said. “Giving the longstanding leadership role that Randi and Lee have played in the Democratic party, and at a time when the party is trying to desperately improve its image with working-class voters and remake itself in a lot of ways, this is really unacceptable.”In an interview, Weingarten said she wished the DNC was conducting an all-out nationwide mobilization to defeat the Trump/GOP budget bill, which would throw an estimated 11 million Americans off health insurance, cut food stamps to millions of families and cause the federal debt to soar by over $3tn.DNC chair Martin told the Guardian that, under his leadership, the DNC was already doing what Weingarten and Saunders were calling for. “I’ve always called myself a pro-labor progressive,” Martin said, noting that he had been a union member and labor organizer. “My family grew up on programs that would be cut if Trump’s tax scam passes. Winning back the working class and stopping Trump from harming families is exactly where our focus is.”Martin added that in his nearly five months as DNC chair, the committee has held 130 town halls and launched an “aggressive war room” to take on Trump. “My first action as DNC chair was pledging to have strong labor voices at the table,” Martin said. “Our job is to win in 2025, 2026 and beyond.”But their resignation statements signal that Weingarten and Saunders have a very different view from Martin of what the DNC is doing on his watch. Several DNC officials said the pair might not be up to date with the DNC’s activities across the 50 states.Weingarten told the Guardian that Martin and the DNC are not showing nearly enough urgency in opposing the Trump/GOP budget bill. “The number one issue in the next two weeks is: how do we help fight the GOP budget bill that faces almost two-to-one public opposition,” she said, adding that the DNC should be going all out to help House and Senate Democrats torpedo the bill.“We can be the voice and be out there with stories about how the budget bill will hurt, and the DNC is a perfect place for doing that,” Weingarten said. “You got to win hearts and minds now, not in October 2026. That’s the kind of thing that we’ve been looking for since January. We have to be a party that wins on the ground.”Artie Blanco, a union activist and DNC vice-chair, said that under Martin, the DNC had been fighting hard against the budget bill.“There are over 16,000 Democratic volunteers making phone calls across the country in targeted congressional districts about the GOP budget, and how it will be devastating to working people,” Blanco said.Weingarten voiced dismay about not being renominated for the rules committee. “It was definitely a sign that my input was not sought any more and [not] appreciated,” she said, stressing that the AFT “will continue to be a leader in electing pro-public education, pro-working family candidates” and planned to be “especially engaged” in the 2025-26 elections.Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, said that Weingarten’s and Saunders’s “claims that Ken and the DNC are not standing up for working people and not standing on the side of unions and union members is laughable”.“Ken has been on the front line to bring unions back to our party,” added Kleeb, who is also chair of the Nebraska Democratic party. “He has appointed more union leaders than any other [DNC] chair” – and put unions at the forefront while chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, before he assumed the DNC’s helm, she said.Stuart Appelbaum, the DNC’s labor chair, and president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, took issue with the statements Weingarten and Saunders made about Martin.“I am thrilled that Ken Martin is prioritizing the importance of having labor at the table and has ensured that there is strong labor representation in every part of the DNC,” Appelbaum said. He added that Martin “understands that working people are the backbone of the party”.Michael Podhorzer, a political strategist and former AFL-CIO political director, said the Democratic party has for decades not focused enough on working-class voters. He said Democrats would have a tough battle winning back blue-collar voters. “The experience of many American working people is they feel left off the radar,” Podhorzer said.Democrats, Podhorzer noted, have suffered the greatest loss of support in communities that were “gutted” after the 2008-09 recession; from the signing of Nafta, a trade deal with Canada and Mexico; and from normalized trade relations with China. Nafta and normalized trade with China were ratified under President Clinton, a Democrat.Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist who has studied Trump’s success in wooing working-class voters, said the decline of US labor unions over the past 50 years has necessarily meant that unions have less sway in the Democratic party.Rosenthal, the former AFL-CIO official and also a former DNC deputy political director, called on the DNC and Democrats to work far more closely with unions.“Among working-class voters, support for unions is through the roof, and the Democratic party and the Republican party have no credibility with working-class voters,” he said. “They don’t trust the parties, but they trust the labor movement. It’s incumbent on the party to build bridges and put the labor movement front and center in everything it does.”“From that standpoint,” he continued, the tension that led to Weingarten and Sauders quitting “is mind-boggling”. Several labor leaders said Martin should have done more to keep prominent and powerful union leaders like Weingarten and Saunders satisfied and on the DNC, even if they backed one of his opponents for DNC chair.Responding to Weingarten and Saunders’ concerns, Martin said: “The DNC and our partners are leading the fight against Trump’s budget bill, investing unprecedented dollars into states so Democrats can win elections from the ground up, and reaching out to voters in working-class districts.”Martin told the Guardian that he’s trying hard to build bridges with the broader labor movement, and increase its role in the DNC and in the Democrats’ efforts. “Winning back the working class and stopping Trump’s budget bill isn’t a political goal, it’s personal,” he said. “Labor runs through my family’s veins.” More

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      Election flows reveal nearly 90% of Greens preferenced Labor ahead of Coalition

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      Minor party preference flows for the federal election have been released, with Labor winning Greens preferences by 88.2–11.8, while the Coalition won One Nation preferences by 74.5–24.5. I also cover a SA state poll that gave Labor a massive 67–33 lead.

      The Australian Electoral Commission’s results for the May 3 federal election now show how minor parties’ preferences flowed between Labor and the Coalition. The Greens won 12.2% of the national primary vote, and their preferences favoured Labor over the Coalition by 88.2–11.8. That’s a 2.5% preference flow gain for Labor since the 2022 election.

      One Nation had 6.4% of primary votes. Their preferences favoured the Coalition over Labor by 74.5–25.5, a 10.2% preference flow gain for the Coalition. Independents made up 7.3% of primary votes, and their preferences favoured Labor by 67.2–32.8, a 3.4% gain for Labor.

      Including Trumpet of Patriots (1.9% of primary votes) with others, others made up 7.7% of primary votes and their preferences favoured the Coalition by 57.3–42.7, a 0.6% gain for the Coalition since 2022 if United Australia Party (4.1% in 2022) is included with others then.

      The AEC formally declared the poll by returning the writs on June 12. Results can be legally challenged within 40 days of this declaration, so by July 22.

      In Bradfield, Teal Nicolette Boele only won by 26 votes against the Liberals, and this result could be challenged.

      As the AEC does not want to disturb the ballot papers until any challenge is resolved by the courts, it is for now using an estimated two-party result in Bradfield (55.0–45.0 to the Liberals against Labor). Analyst Ben Raue believes this estimate is understating Labor in Bradfield by 4.4%.

      If Raue is right, the current national two-party vote (55.22–44.78 to Labor) is very slightly understating Labor.

      While One Nation’s preference shift helped the Coalition, there were compensatory shifts to Labor from Greens and independent voters. The combined primary vote for One Nation and Trumpet of Patriots was down 0.8% from 2022 to 8.3%, while independents were up 2.0%.

      Applying 2022 election flows to primary votes at this election only overstates Labor by 0.1% compared to their actual two-party vote.

      In my poll review article on June 5, I said respondent allocated preferences in final polls did not show a large gap in the Coalition’s favour from using 2022 election flows that had occurred in polls earlier in the year.

      It’s likely that Labor’s share of preferences from Greens and Teal-type independents rose close to the election. People who voted for these candidates may have been disappointed with Labor’s environmental record, but both Peter Dutton and Donald Trump helped Labor with these people.

      In the last term, the Greens were economically left-wing as well as pro-environment. Voters who supported the Greens because of their economic agenda are probably less likely to prefer the Coalition to Labor than environmental voters.

      The Poll Bludger has a graph that shows that, in federal elections since 2004, Labor’s share of Greens preferences was at a record high this election, but their share of One Nation preferences was at a record low.

      Weak Labor flows to Boele

      In Bradfield, Labor preferences favoured Boele by 68.6–31.4 against the Liberals.There were 16 other seats where Labor preferences were distributed between the Coalition and a non-Coalition candidate. The Labor flow to Boele was the second weakest in such seats. This weak flow almost cost Boele Bradfield.

      Independent Nicolette Boele’s win in the seat of Bradfield could yet be challenged.
      Dean Lewins/AAP

      The only seat that had a weaker Labor preference flow to a non-Coalition candidate was Maranoa, where the non-Coalition candidate was One Nation. Labor preferences in Maranoa split 57.9–42.1 to the Liberal National Party against One Nation. In 13 of the 17 seats, Labor preferences flowed at over 75% rates to the non-Coalition candidate.

      In early April, the ABC reported Boele had made a crude sexual remark to a 19-year-old employee at a hair salon after receiving a haircut and was banned from that salon. This may explain the weaker preference flow from Labor voters.

      Weak Greens flows to Teals in Teal vs Labor contests

      There were three seats where the final two were Labor and a Teal independent: Bean, Franklin and Fremantle. In Bean and Fremantle, the Liberals recommended preferences to the Teal on their how to vote material, but not in Franklin.

      Labor held all three seats, but only by 50.3–49.7 in Bean and 50.7–49.3 in Fremantle. Labor won much more easily in Franklin, by 57.8–42.2, where they benefited from Liberal how to vote cards.

      In Bean, Greens preferences only favoured Teal Jessie Price by 50.6–49.4 over Labor, while Liberal preferences favoured her by 80.0–20.0. In Fremantle, Greens preferences favoured Teal Kate Hulett by 52.9–47.1, while Liberal preferences favoured her by 76.5–23.5. In Franklin, Greens preferences favoured Teal Peter George by 53.8–46.2.

      In the ACT seat of Bean, Greens preferences favoured the Teal candidate, but only just.
      Lukas Coch/AAP

      In Bean and Fremantle, had Greens preferences been stronger for the Teal, Labor would have lost to a more pro-environment candidate. Perhaps Labor benefited on Greens preferences owing to the Greens’ more economic left-wing agenda.

      And a national Morgan poll, conducted June 2–22 from a sample of 3,957, gave Labor a 58–42 lead, unchanged from the previous Morgan poll in May. Primary votes were 37.5% Labor (up 0.5), 31% Coalition (steady), 12% Greens (up 0.5), 6% One Nation (steady) and 13.5% for all Others (down one).

      By 43–41.5, voters thought the country was headed in the right direction, the first time right direction has led since February 2023. The overall net +1.5 rating is +48 with Labor voters, +11.5 with Greens, -43 with Coalition voters, -80.5 with One Nation voters and -17.5 with all Others.

      Labor holds massive lead in SA

      The next South Australian state election will be held in March 2026. A YouGov poll for The Adelaide Advertiser, conducted May 15–28 from a sample of 903, gave Labor a massive 67–33 lead over the Liberals (54.6–45.4 to Labor at the March 2022 election). Primary votes were 48% Labor, 21% Liberals, 14% Greens, 7% One Nation, 8% independents and 2% others.

      If the results at next March’s election reflect this poll, the Liberals would hold just two of the 47 lower house seats on a uniform swing. It would be easily their worst result in SA state history.

      In Australian electoral history, there has only been one bigger landslide: when Western Australian Labor defeated the Liberals and Nationals by 69.7–30.3 at the March 2021 state election.

      Socialist likely to be next New York City mayor

      I covered today’s AEST New York City Democratic mayoral primary election for The Poll Bludger. While preferences won’t be tabulated until next Tuesday, the socialist Zohran Mamdani leads former New York governor Andrew Cuomo by 43.5–36.4 on primary votes, and is virtually certain to win. As the Democratic nominee, Mamdani is likely to win the November general election.

      The article also covers Donald Trump’s ratings and polls in Israel. More