Alec Baldwin famously threatened to move to Canada if George W Bush won the 2000 presidential election, and since then a string of celebrities have threatened to leave the US if Donald Trump is elected president.
But spare a thought for political insiders and pundits in Australia who bet their metaphorical houses against a hung parliament at the 2 July federal election.
With the election result still in doubt, a hung parliament is now considered likely and that’s enough to have some blushing at their bold predictions before the double dissolution.
Sky News anchor Peter van Onselen was so sure of majority government, he said he’d quit his commentary gig if he were wrong:
Just going to leave this here @vanOnselenP pic.twitter.com/CPvowZJSiK
— James O'Doherty (@jmodoh) July 3, 2016
Founder of polling startup Metapoll and the former Greens candidate Osman Faruqi promised he would tattoo the result on his chest:
If we end up with a hung parliament I'm going to tattoo this tweet onto my chest.
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) March 10, 2016
Getting a tattoo of the tweet might seem extreme, but Faruqi is now claiming he considered it likely all along:
You guys realise this tweet was about me predicting a hung parliament yeah?
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) July 2, 2016
But it’s not just the chattering classes that have made predictions that a hung parliament was off the cards.
Nick Xenophon, founder of the Nick Xenophon Team, has been promising bottles of Grange if he was wrong about the outcome.
Xenophon could have a get out of jail free card as the exact terms of the bet were a bottle for “any journalist who says there will be ... a hung parliament”. Since the result was unexpected, there aren’t many who will be able to cash in.
And good thing, too, as the 2011 vintage Grange sells for $750 a bottle. The 1959 bottle that former New South Wales premier Barry O’Farrell failed to declare was worth $3,000. But then, Xenophon did not mention a particular vintage.
It’s ironic that pundits who got it wrong will be among the first to offer new opinions about what will happen next. And we just might believe them, too.
And who knows what the next round of bets, vows and hasty promises will produce in terms of regrets and unfulfilled threats?
If there's another election I'm moving to Botswana to get my pilot's licence and fly light planes across the Okavango Delta #ausvotes
— Michael Koziol (@michaelkoziol) July 2, 2016
The final result won’t be known for at least 12 days as we wait for return of postal votes. Then, as a nation, it’s time to collect on these bets.
