But as the dust settles on the state election, it’s worth thinking about these recent pearls of wisdom from the Labor leader.

Andrews reckons he talks to "lots of real people, as in civilians, who are not involved in this contest who become a wonderful barometer of things that are very big on Spring Street but mean very little on main street".

That’s Andrews' way of saying that the preoccupations of Victoria’s political classes and media do not mean much in the world where most voters live. That we’ve got it wrong.

Andrews didn’t just say it, he’s lived it for the past four years and much more intensely for the past four weeks.

And there he was on Saturday evening, looking poised to lead his party into another four years of majority government and leaving pundits scratching their head as to how such a "scandal-plagued" government could be riding so high in the opinion polls.

It points to a disconnect between what gets the Spring Street circus excited and what’s actually likely to stop a barbecue or sway a vote in an outer suburban marginal seat.

Exhibit A: the red shirts affair where Labor improperly used taxpayers’ money to pay its campaigners for the 2014 election campaign.

Probably the biggest state political story of the year, this thing has commanded a lot of newspaper front pages, although it hasn’t led a lot of TV bulletins.

And, despite the Liberal opposition spending a lot of their precious time, effort and money trying to make red shirts a big thing in the marginals, it just never took off as an election-breaking issue.

Why not? Well, there’s been speculation that voters might figure that it wasn’t that bad, that maybe they think it’s typical politics, or that once the money was paid back, what’s the big deal?

Or maybe they just don’t care. Or they don’t care nearly as much as they do about their jobs, their daily commutes, their children’s health and or their education.

Crime is something else that turned out to be not as big a thing.

This was supposed to be the "law and order" election, remember? But it hasn’t worked out like that.

Sure, people are concerned about crime but are they as concerned as the Coalition and much of the media hope they were? Well, the polls say no.

Labor under Andrews have campaigned on a lot of things that aren’t in the media, such as TAFE and other vocational training which they believe is of huge concern to people in the 'burbs who want a better life for themselves and their children and who know education is the key.

There are plenty of other examples: the return of the school dental bus or the promised kindergartens attached to new schools, appealing to mums and dads who hate the dreaded double drop-off in the morning.

Dentist’s appointments and double-drop-offs don’t make many front pages. But Daniel Andrews and his Labor colleagues reckon they make plenty of votes.

And at this stage, it looks like they’re right.