(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)

Elections are important but also deeply weird. Every three years, an esoteric lexicon is dragged out like the good china at Christmas lunch, and before you can say “optional preferential” the air is filled with “hustings”, “corflutes” and “donkeys”.

To many, this thicket of verbiage can be off-putting. Luckily, Crikey humorist Tom Red is on hand to translate.

Gaffe: An unforced verbal error such as forgetting the treasurer’s name or saying “how good is Edgecliff?” when you’re actually in Edgeworth.

Gotcha: A factoidal landmine deployed by click-hungry journalists too lazy to do proper research. A single gotcha is survivable. Three can be fatal.

Brain fart: When a candidate confuses inside voice with outside voice.

Brain snap: When a candidate shakes off their minder, forgets the talking points and chats freely with the unvetted. More serious than a brain fart, but not as bad as a brain explosion.

Brain explosion: Raised voices, swearing, home-truths and finger pointing. A brain explosion looks and feels like genuine human emotion. If the explosion is not too unhinged, it can actually enhance a candidate’s standing. Done poorly, the press will make Mark Latham jokes, and no one comes back from that. Of the current crop, only Bob Katter can turn brain explosions on and off at will.

Walking something back: Most of us don’t have a real-life delete button to make our mistakes disappear. Politicians do. They’re called spokespeople. They wade into swirling media shitstorms and calmly explain that their candidate had in fact said that the deputy prime minister was a “consummate Aussie Aristotle” not “a completely maggoted arsehole” as some in the media had insisted.

Hitting the campaign trail: Campaigning.

Hitting the wombat trail: Campaigning with Barnaby.

Listening: Talking at voters.

Canvassing: Talking and smiling at voters.

Pressing the flesh: Talking, smiling and gesticulating at voters.

Democracy sausage: A sausage to remind you that you’re not at Bunnings, but you could be.

The path to victory: Paved with promises, excuses, good intentions, broken dreams, missing phone chargers, divorce papers and the crushed bones of the vanquished.

Vote whisperer: A mystical creature fȇted by single-issue candidates and micro parties. A good vote whisperer has the chutzpah of Keyser Söze, the ethics of Emperor Caligula and the encyclopaedic experience of Antony Green.

Corflute: A sturdy outdoor campaign poster that contains an old and enhanced photo of the candidate and a slogan containing up to three of the following words: forward, better, together, stronger, fair, community, sober, pardoned. Traditionally, corflutes carry party logos and colours. On occasion, however, a candidate from a major party may feel the need to ditch the party branding and adopt a different hue — from LNP blue (PMS 7686) to something in teal, for example.