History Series / TheElectionChaser

-->'''Woman''': Vote liberal, and then John Howard's just going to leave it, leave it with Kim, Kim Beazley, isn't it?

* ImmediateSelfContradiction: In 2010, Peter Van Onselen of Sky News called the election for Labor at 8:01pm, before acknowledging three minutes later that this may have been premature - a good choice, since four hours later no one had a result. For this, Andrew and Chas awarded him "Most Premature Election Call", only to immediately change their minds before he could accept it.

* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: In the 2004 series, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNtwR-_Yh1Y Chas calls up Australia's top radio commentators]] and passes himself off as a Liberal stooge posing as a concerned citizen by reading a campaign ad verbatim. John Laws sees through it and cuts "Tony" off in the middle of the first sentence. Back in the studio, Craig asks, "What kind of credible broadcaster would let you get away with reading the whole ad?" Chris replies, "Well, there might be ''one''." Cut to "Tony" getting Alan Jones to do exactly that.

-->'''Tony''': Like many shows on TV, ''Lateline'' has always been filmed in front of a live studio audience, but unlike other shows you very rarely hear them. There've been exceptions, of course, my recent interview with Prime Minister Gillard was barely audible since the audience was full of football fans who had just come from the World Cup.\\

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Chas and Charles appear on the panel with Craig, Julian and Chris throughout ''The Election Chaser''. Not so much in ''The Chaser Decides'', and Charles didn't appear after the 2004 election. In addition the 2001 series lacks the fake news {{Crawl}} used in ''The Chaser Decides'' (previously seen in ''CNNNN''), replaced in 2010 by a fake Twitter feed.

* StopCopyingMe: The 2007 series has a parody ad based on the Advertising/GetAMac campaign, with Andrew as Liberal and Chris as Labor. Andrew quickly gets annoyed with Chris saying "{{Me too}}," to each of his promises.

* WorstNewsJudgementEver: In 2010, Chas and Andrew made fun of National Nine News ignoring Tony Abbott's announcement of his plan for mental health, in favour of covering [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext Tony Abbott burning his budgie smugglers on a radio show]].

* MotorMouth: [=John McConnell=] and Ted Rickman (or as he prefers, T Rickman Canberra).

* RattlingOffLegal: Used several times at the end of fake political ads, usually with an explanation for why they're talking so fast (such as being parked in a tow-away zone). An episode of the 2007 series had two such people, John [=McConnell=] (Chris) and T Rickman Canberra (Andrew), debating with each other, about as quickly as you'd expect. The 2010 series has T Rickman Canberra appear in a parody of Creator/AlPacino's Vittoria Coffee ad.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Chas and Charles appear on the panel with Craig, Julian and Chris throughout ''The Election Chaser''. Not so much in ''The Chaser Decides'', and Charles didn't appear after the 2004 election. In addition the 2001 series lacks the fake news ticker used in ''The Chaser Decides'' (previously seen in ''CNNNN''), replaced in 2010 by a fake Twitter feed.

* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: In the 2004 series, Chas calls up Australia's top radio commentators and passes himself off as a Liberal stooge by reading a campaign ad verbatim. John Laws sees through it and cuts "Tony" off in the middle of the first sentence. Back in the studio, Craig asks, "What kind of credible broadcaster would let you get away with reading the whole ad?" Chris replies, "Well, there might be ''one''." Cut to "Tony" getting Alan Jones to do exactly that.

** In 2013, Julian goes out and asks people for opinions on politics, with most of the questions being ridiculously dated. It starts with Julian asking someone to rate Malcolm Turnbull as Opposition Leader (a position he lost in 2009, which the first person does notice), progresses to asking people to rate Andrew Peacock as Opposition Leader (a position he lost in 1990), and gets sillier from there ("Should Australia undertake Federation?" "Should we introduce decimal currency?"). But while most of the responses shown fit this trope, the segment ends with a man saying that he's not sure why he's asking whether the late Billy Hughes should challenge Kevin Rudd for leadership, and accusing Julian and Creator/TheABC of push-pollingin a blatant attempt to inflate the ALP marketing. As he walks away, Julian calls this "a pretty good summary".

* SelectiveStupidity: The "This Person Votes/Voted" vox pops.

* TheUnintelligble: Doug Cameron MP is treated is this in the 2013 series due to his Scottish accent, with Julian asking if a statement he gave on Radio National was a) True, b) False or c) Indecipherable. When Doug himself admits it was "Unintelligible", Julian claims that he didn't quite get that but doesn't want to seem racist.

* DepartmtenOfRedundancyDepartment: Craig Emerson's claim in 2013 that "Mr. Abbott's relentless negativity is relentless. He then repeated this on the show in a parody of the Skyhooks song "Horror Movie" (a RunningGag in this series): "My relentless repetition of adjectives is relentless there on my TV..."

* InMemoriam: The 2001 special ended with a list of politicians who lost their seats, as well as Kim Beazley losing the Labor Leadership and the general loss of Compassion (referring to Howard's policy on asylum seekers).

* MedalOfDishonour: The Mal Award is given out weekly, at least in the early specials, to the candidate or other political figure responsible for the worst act of political suicide on the campaign trail. The award is named for Mal Meninga, a rugby league star who infamously ran for the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly in 2001, only to pull out of his campaign about thirty seconds into his first radio interview. Meninga himself appeared in the 2007 series to announce the award, only to "give up" mid-speech.

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: {{Invoked}} in the 2001 sketch where Chas accosts Bronwyn Bishop while dressed as a bumblebee. For context, it's part of a summary of what behaviours are appropriate or inappropriate when greeting politicians (such as how handshakes should not last for [[ExtendedGreetings over a minute]]), but Bishop had no way of knowing that and may not have even noticed the cameras. Really, this applies to most of the Chaser's early public stunts, though it seems that by the third episode people had started to recognise them (eg, Mark Latham and Natasha Stott Despoja accepting their Mal awards).