Despite a spirited campaign from both Brenton and Joel in the last year, a recent poll by our sister newspaper The Heyfield Hollerer has again awarded Nick the title as everyone’s favourite Dinsdale brother. As first reported by us in March last year, a poll conducted by the Hollerer delivered Nick an overwhelming 99% of the votes, much to the chagrin of his less popular brothers Brenton and Joel.

Stung by the results last year, Brenton and Joel put their heads together and launched a stoic campaign to win more votes in any subsequent poll, but it appears those efforts have amounted to nothing. Instead, they actually lost ground, with Nick claiming 99.5% of the votes in the poll conducted last week.

Interestingly, the poll opened just days after Joel had been publicly acknowledged in the Australia Day awards for the substantial and generous charity work that has conducted in the local area. Buoyed by that worthy recognition, Joel felt confident when the poll opened, reportedly telling close friends that he thought he was “a red hot chance” to take the title this year.

Meanwhile, Brenton decided to continue along the line of using babies to boost his profile, welcoming his young son Teddy into the world in an attempt to grab a few more votes. But all that amounted to was just looking like a desperate politician kissing random babies in the street in a failed effort to gain popularity in the local community.

While all this was taking place in the Gippsland region, Nick just went about his business – albeit as far away as Ballarat on the other side of Victoria – and still managed to win the lion’s share of the voting. He even went to the USA for a couple of weeks just to prove that he didn’t need to be pounding down on the campaign trail to win the hearts and minds of the people of Heyfield. Political analysts have described the win as “an extraordinary achievement that no doubt underlines both Nick’s popularity and the combined unpopularity of Brenton and Joel”.

Will Brenton and Joel go back to the drawing board to campaign for next year’s poll? Or will they just concede defeat and acknowledge that Nick holds an unassailable lead on the title as everyone’s favourite Dinsdale? Only time will tell…

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