But there he is, the man responsible for one of the three worst bloodbaths in the Victorian Liberals’ history.

The pundits said this was going to be close. But it looks like they’re going to need extra seats on Labor’s side of the State Parliament’s lower house.

It’s hard to overstate the damage Andrews inflicted on his enemies in the Liberal and Greens parties on Saturday night.

If the Liberals need a new leader, as looks likely, its going to be tough to choose after all the frontbenchers they lost on Saturday and they can forget about finding someone with a safe seat.

Assuming somebody wants the job of two-term, at least, opposition leader, because its hard to imagine the Coalition coming back from this before 2026.

How did Andrews and his red army achieve all of this? Well it’s complicated to pick apart but here’s a start.

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 have got it wrong.

Now, there he is, leaving pundits scratching their head as to how such a ‘scandal plagued’ government could have slaughtered its opponents like this.

It points to a disconnect between what excites the Spring Street circus and what will 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 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 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 didn’t work out like that.
Sure, people are concerned about crime but are they as concerned as the Coalition and much of the media had hoped 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 the 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 have proved they make plenty of votes.