MAGA-inspired outrage machine has a new target in this election
'Never make predictions, especially about the future,' New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel famously said. In the sport of politics we are in peak prediction mode this week – and Saturday night will reveal what surprises are in store.
I've been part of many elections where the polls have got it spectacularly wrong – most shockingly in Labor's 2019 loss and most painfully in Donald Trump's 2016 win.
Both were a result of the fact that while we obsess about the number of people who report a certain opinion at a given moment in time, we pay much less attention to the strength of that opinion. Large and unpredicted swings between polls and actual results are usually a reflection of the 'softness' of the opinions held by those being polled – the likeliness they will change their mind. Too often we report public opinion as if it is chiselled in stone.
We experienced this collectively as a nation in 2023. The prime minister, encouraged by polls that showed up to 75 per cent support for an Indigenous Voice to parliament, ploughed ahead with a referendum to enshrine it even after Peter Dutton's denial of bipartisanship.
As we found out, in the face of a barrage of unprecedented disinformation and a sophisticated MAGA-inspired outrage machine, that support turned out to be very soft. Over the course of the campaign it evaporated – on polling day the Yes vote garnered less than 40 per cent.
Similarly, we have in recent years taken the same levels of support for renewable energy as if they are chiselled in stone. More than 70 per cent of Australians support the transition to renewables, and more ambitious climate targets. Most pundits take broad social licence for a transition to clean energy – a fancy way of saying the community is on board – as a fait accompli.
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But renewable energy is right now facing a barrage of unprecedented disinformation and a sophisticated MAGA-inspired outrage machine, akin to what we saw during the Voice. Its very purpose is to undermine the social licence under which renewable energy projects operate. Having lost the argument on the existence of climate change, as the world proceeded to burn before our eyes, opponents quickly pivoted instead to undermining support for renewables.
While the Voice had to withstand a torrent of misinformation-based attacks on social media, from 'say NO to save Australia Day' to 'farmers will need a permit to put up a fence', renewables face the same.
Social media is ripe with anti-renewables outrage. Hysteria over offshore wind farms killing whales (they don't). Hysteria over solar fields ruining pristine farmland (they don't). Hysteria over vehicle fuel-emissions standards banning utes (they don't) or ruining the weekend (they don't).
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