Peter Dutton’s target demographic – mortgage-saddled middle-aged or older Australians, who he tried to court with a fuel cut and tax offset – are among those who abandoned the Coalition at the election, pollsters say.
The Liberal party, at this stage, has eight seats to its name that can be defined as urban, and it’s likely its next leader will hold a regional seat – the purview of its sister party, the Nationals.
Pollsters have attributed Labor’s victory to an increase in support from women, younger Australians and some culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
Redbridge director Kos Samaras said middle-aged Australians in general also abandoned the Coalition.
“The votes that the Coalition lost over an eight-week period, where we saw the Liberal primary [vote] collapse by about 9%, were mainly people in their 40s and 50s who rent or still have a mortgage, and live in the outer suburbs and regions.”
Experts had warned the vote of gen Z and millennials – those born between 1981 and 2010 – were increasing the progressive vote, and were moving away from the major parties.
But on two-party preferred votes, those generations, which now outnumber the baby boomers, overwhelmingly supported Labor over the Coalition – on a scale of 60 to 40.
“Amongst gen Z and millennials, the Labor primary is easily around 60% two-party preferred, consistent across all electorates, including regional Australia,” Samaras said.
He said women were particularly turned off by the Coalition, and rejected leader Peter Dutton more than former prime minister Scott Morrison.
“The gender split is the biggest I have ever seen, far worse than Morrison,” Samaras said.
“On two-party preferred, Labor’s vote amongst women was 55 versus the Coalition’s 45, in the electorates we were tracking, and that’s amongst areas that we were tracking. That’s outer suburban and regional electorates only.”
Prof Nicholas Biddle, head of the school of politics and international relations at ANU, said the “signs were already there”.
“My read of it is that the scale of those shifts were greater than we thought, but the directions were all starting to emerge even late last year and early this year.”
Biddle said his research found age, cultural background and gender were all key factors, but also added that education and housing tenure had an impact.
“Where there has been shifts, it would appear that it’s in areas with relatively high levels of education, and that’s been emerging over a little while, and really it appears the scale has accelerated.”
As Coalition support dropped, Biddle said that not all of that, as some had predicted, went out to the minor parties and independents.
Labor was able to increase its primary vote across the country, Biddle said.
Earlier this year, the shift of support for the Coalition didn’t equate to an increase in votes for Labor – but that changed when Australians cast their votes.
“What appears to have occurred is those shifts have gone not just in second and third preferences but even first preferences to Labor,” Biddle said.
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“It’s not just a Coalition loss – it’s easy to look at Dutton losing his seat, and the emergence or salience of Donald Trump – but it appears that it is an improvement in support for the Labor party.”
Results in Tasmania showed more regional areas left the Coalition for Labor.
In Queenstown, in the seat of Braddon, Labor recorded a primary vote of 44% and a swing of more than 20%. Almost a fifth of workers in the area are trades workers and technicians, the kind of voters the Coalition was trying to hold on to.
Samaras said voters who spoke a language other than English at home also backed the Labor party over the Coalition.
“That’s such a big one, so the two-party preferred for Labor amongst Australians who speak another language at home is 60% across all our research,” he said.
“And of course that is a drastic problem for a party that was trying to win seats in two swing states of NSW and Victoria.”
Samaras said it was particularly the Indian and Chinese diaspora who supported Labor.
“This is why they lost Deakin and Menzies [in Victoria].”