The surprising thing was not that he "lost", but that he did so extraordinarily well.
The Aug 2010 federal election was never expected to be a close contest.
Labor went into it with a thumping majority. They held 88 of the 150 lower house seats. They only need 76 to form Govt, so they had 12 up their sleeve, thanks to the result from 2007.
Abbott was given the target of stripping away 6 seats in 2010, with probably a stretch goal of 8 seats, such that the coalition would be competitive the next time around.
The ALP under Gillard went in with 88 seats and came out the other side with only 72 seats. Abbott managed to strip 16 seats off Labor, double the amount of his stretch goal.
No-one in their wildest dreams could have predicted, or did predict that Labor would lose so many seats such that they could not form Govt by themselves.
Anyone talking crazy talk like 'Abbott was expected to win' is pure fantasy.
If a Federal Election were held today the result would be a close ALP win according to this weekend’s multi-mode Morgan Poll on Federal voting intention with an Australia-wide cross-section of 3,438 Australian electors aged 18+.
I had to giggle at this. There are 150 electorates nation wide. Each of those 150 electorates varies between about 90,000 and 110,000 electors.
If they polled 3,438 voters, that means they talked to on average, about 23 people from each electorate. 23. Only 23. A tiny 23. From that 23, they are trying to guess what the 100,000 are going to do. Good luck with the margin of error on that puppy.
Get real. The poll is a joke.
Let's all wait for the election to find out what the real story is......and waiting....and waiting.