The Parliamentary Library released an interesting little bit of stuff the other day, Population change in Commonwealth electoral divisions, 2006 to 2007.
What makes this interesting is the way the data plays out with the data from the 2007 Election.
First up let’s do a chart (!!); we’ll plot the ALP TPP swing by electorate from the 2007 election against the growth in the size of the 65 year + age group in each electorate over the 2006/07 period. We’ll also run a LOESS regression through it to show how the regression line of best fit changes through the range of values of the ALP swing.
The patterns here are interesting – for seats that received a swing that was smaller in size than the average of 5.4% (which happened to be a majority of seats, as it was a chunk of seats with large swings that drove the average up), the percentage growth in the size of the 65 yr and older population in those seats was, on average close to the national average of the 65+ growth, which was 2.7%
However, in the seats where the swings to the ALP were greater than 5.4%, the percentage growth in the 65+ population increased above the national average as the ALP swing increased beyond its national average.
That black regression line tells the story – it tracks the national average in the growth of the 65+ age cohort until it hits the ALP swing average, than grows substantially as the ALP swing grows.
In those seats that had an above average swing, the growth in the population of the 65+ cohort over the 2006-2007 period either drove the big ALP swing directly, or correlated with something or some group of things that drove the big swings.
Keeping all that in your thought orbit, let’s now take a look at a different comparison of this same issue; whereas the above was comparing a flow (the change in the ALP TPP vote) to another flow (the change in the population 65 years and older), we’ll compare a stock (the actual ALP TPP vote) to another stock (the actual proportion of the population that is in the 65+ group) – and we’ll again do it by electorate.
There’s a moderate relationship here that we all know about – the larger the proportion of oldies in a seat, the higher the Coalition vote. We also know that this is a direct correlation from the polling we see; people over the age of 65 vote for the Coalition in greater proportions than any other age demographic.
But if we bring all this info together, it tells us that while the oldies still vote for the Coalition in large numbers, the geographic power of that demographic (or the spatial relationship between the 65+ demographic and Coalition vote, by electorate) broke down at the 2007 election. Not only did it break down, it in fact reversed itself to a degree.
It didn’t reverse itself enough to make up for the strength of the pre-existing 65+/Coalition vote relationship by electorate, but the flow (the change in the proportion of the 65+ population) reduced the Coalition benefit that is contained in the stock (the total proportion of the population over 65+). The Coalition lost substantial ground in this key piece of their demographic electoral geography.
Further food for thought is that the people that moved into the 65+ demographic aren’t even baby boomers – it will only continue to get worse for the Coalition.
If we further break down our comparison of flows vs flows (the change in the 65+ population vs. the change in the ALP TPP vote) into metro and non-metro seats, more interesting things emerge (and we’ll run a simple linear regression line through these)
The relationship in the metro seats between the growth in the 65+ age group and the size of the ALP swing is positive and highly statistically significant, but the same relationship in the non-metropolitan seats is statistically insignificant (as in, there is no relationship despite the slight angle on the regression line). This is important because it knocks out the “sea change” effect from our list of possible explanations. Most of the destruction of the Coalition superiority in the 65+ group is happening in the cities.
Next up – we’ll take a look at young families and the ALP vote to discover something quite astonishing (to me, anyway), and then bring these demographic discoveries together with some regression magic.
9 Comments
Good news for all non-Liberals
Either the party as it is is doomed, or it has to change.. and the only real way for it to go is to the left. If it is even possible to go further right than the last government, that way lies oblivion. They could carry on as they are and slowly haemorrhage to death, or get in the real world and jettison their baggage from The Rattus Years.
Top work poss.
Do you think the party machines are this detailed and specific?
Also, if you’re astonished, I’m looking forward to it.
Another also – just imagine writing out a performance brief for an opposition leader based upon demography…
It’s little wonder that it’s tough finding talent to put their hand up for that job these days.
At some point it seems they’re going to have to sell 65+’s a new message – good luck with that!
But but… I wanna know now! :stamps feet:
I would think that the Libs are well aware of what you have identified here possum and this is why they have been behind the demonstrations of allied senior groups trying to regain that demographic.
Notice that these demo’s have taken place in metropolitan areas and have specifically been structured to gain maximum media coverage, especially TV, and to give the Opposition plentiful material to work into specifically directed questions in QT.
Also designed to get maximum coverage in evening news bulletins and current affairs type coverage. They are well aware of the potential long term loss to their voting base. I don’t know what they can do about the youth vote though. My lad, 17 & politically aware & active, tells me that amongst his fellow students that even the strong Liberal supporters can’t cop Turnbull.
This is a major problem for them. One only has to see the reception Kevin Rudd gets at high schools & Universities to understand that this could be an even bigger problem for the Libs.
Fascinating stuff Possum – and looking at that article from July (been a bit too busy the last 12 months to follow everything) reminds me a bit of American Harry S. Dent’s “spending wave” demographic analysis that reasonably accurately predicted the massive stock market boom in the USA in the 1990’s.
Onimod – I’m sure the party pollsters and electoral navel gazers at least this specific. They have access to their own detailed tracking polls, so they can do things we we can only think about in terms of the available data.
Possum,
I hope you can do a similar evaluation of the youth vote. ie the 18 to 30 demographic. It should make for interesting analysis & discussion.
Very interesting! Wondering if you looked in a similar way at Greens vs ALP and Libs in metro seats what the long term trends with respect to these (and other) key demographics might reveal? Are Green voters simply a subset of ALP for statistical purposes in this kind of analysis (of primary votes) or do they behave differently? My perspective locally (metro sydney) is that fewer green voters are actually giving preferences to ALP (where exhaustion possible) and also (to a lesser degree) fewer ALP primary voters are giving second to Greens. Waverley council would now have a Green mayor except for this for example (only 39% preference flow from ALP to Green in Hunter ward of Waverley). Interested in your analysis.