Daniel Andrews wins third term as Victorian premier as Liberal Party handed ‘disaster’

Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews has secured a third term of majority government in an emphatic victory which delivered an electoral disaster to the Liberal Party.

The ABC has projected Labor will win more than 45 seats, and could come close to the 55-seat majority it enjoyed during its second term in power.

Addressing the Labor faithful on Saturday night, Mr Andrews declared that “hope always defeats hate” and suggested critics who accused him of dividing the state during his government’s controversial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic had been proven wrong.

“We were instead united in our faith in science and in our faith and care for and in each other,” he said.

Mr Andrews, who has said he intends to serve out the full four years of his next term, said his government would work for all Victorians.

“No matter how you voted, no matter what your views or opinions, that’s what our job is,” he said.

“We take our job seriously, because Labor does what matters.”

ABC election analyst Antony Green said the Andrews government had enjoyed a “solid re-election” despite swings against it.

With more than 60 per cent of the vote counted on Saturday night, Labor had recorded a swing of nearly 9 per cent against it in Melbourne’s north-west.

But due to the party’s significant margins, it did not result in any seats there being lost.

The party performed much better in Melbourne’s east, where it defended seats won in 2018 and was projected to win Glen Waverley and the redistributed seat of Bayswater.

“Their results in eastern Melbourne are remarkable, to increase the number of seats they hold is unexpected compared to what was thought beforehand,” Green said.

“So the doom and gloom that was predicted beforehand turned out not to be true.”

Monash University senior politics lecturer Zareh Ghazarian said the result was a clear “vindication” of the Andrews’s government.

“Voters have resoundingly given his government the thumbs up for not only the future agenda that they promoted during the campaign and before the campaign but also in terms of the way in which the pandemic was managed,” Dr Ghazarian said.