Fresh from winning the Liberal National Coalition its second term in office, Premier Mike Baird has released his first post-election tweet - a picture of him and his wife embracing.
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The intimate black and white photo showed the re-elected premier kissing his wife Kerryn on the cheek.
Thank you, NSW. I love this State. We will work for you, every day, for the next 4 years.
pic.twitter.com/rgKiOqrGui — Mike Baird (@mikebairdMP)
March 28, 2015
Underneath the picture, Mr Baird wrote, "Thank you NSW. I love this state. We will work for you, everyday, for the next 4 years."
The photo is in a similar vein to one that Barack Obama tweeted hugging his wife, Michelle, after his re-election as US President in November 2012.
Four more years.
pic.twitter.com/bAJE6Vom — Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
November 7, 2012
Mr Obama's tweet made history, becoming the most retweeted image in the history of Twitter. The image was retweeted more than 751,000 times. It also attracted over a million "likes" on Facebook, reflecting Mr Obama's popularity on social media and successful online electoral strategies.
The carefully crafted photo was considered an iconic image that was republished around the world with the words "four more years" below the embracing couple.
Mr Obama's tweet also had an immediate impact impact on popular culture and fashion. The dress that Mrs Obama wore, which cost less than $US100 from retail website ASOS, almost immediately flew off the online retailer's shelves.
Mr Baird's photo had, at the time of writing attracted 339 retweets, and 11,1176 likes on Facebook and had attracted a mixture of favourable comments on social media.
The re-elected Premier had every right to be happy after appearing on track to win a healthy majority of 53 seats in NSW's 93 seat parliament, with Labor on track for 34 and the Greens appearing to have won 4 seats.
Although the result was a swing back to Labor after the Liberal-National landslide of 2011, it was still a healthy majority for Mr Baird's government.
The Coalition appears to have lost about 10 seats in what is considered a correction to the 2011 result.
Mr Baird used his victory speech to declare that the people of NSW had given him a mandate to proceed with his flagship policy of partially privatising of the State's electricity network to fund new transport infrastructure.
"We decided to be open with the people of NSW. We exposed ourselves to a big scare campaign, I believe the biggest scare campaign in NSW history," Mr Baird said.
