Next seat up for a profile is the Victorian metro electorate of Aston.
2007 Election Result and Two Party Preferred History
| Party | LP | ALP | GRN | NP | FFP | OTH |
| 07 Primary | 50.71 | 38.84 | 5.23 | 0 | 3.47 | 1.75 |
Age Profile, Family Composition, Housing and Migration
The final three categories in that last chart measure the proportion of the population that had the same address in 2001 as they did in 2006, the proportion of the population that moved location between 2001 and 2006 but moved locally (that is, moved houses within their Local Statistical Area – an ABS geographical category based on local government boundaries), and the proportion of the population that moved houses between 2001 and 2006, but moved from outside of their local area. Those last three stats gives us an idea of the size of the population growth/churn going on in a seat.
Income and Employment
Please note: Centrelink data is from 2008 and comes from the Dept of Human Services website.
Map comes from the Australian Electoral Commission.
All other data derives from the 2006 Census.
12 Comments
Does anyone know how well the political parties do this sort of thing?
Because, they have significantly more amounts of information about people than just census data.
Shouldn’t the Income and Age profile graphs be bar graphs (or pie graphs, come to think of it) rather than line graphs, as they measure quantities at one point in in time rather than progression over time? I keep misreading these.
SBR – because age and income is a spectrum, the line charts probably better highlight the shape of the spectrum we’re dealing with for each seat, showing the bulges and troughs in various age groups and income cohorts.
I was originally going to post a comment that the most intersting thing to concentrate on with demography is any variable where an electorate is an outlier. Once you account for income, and then city versus country, Australian electorates are remarkably similar. That’s certainly the case compared to UK electorates.
I think you should check the housing tenure data. It says that 87% of Aston residents were at the same address at the 2001 and 2006 census compared to 80% of Victorians and just over 50% of all Australians. The figure for Aston is extraordinarily high given the AEC rule of thumb that a quarter to a third of voters change address in a three year electoral cycle. And the difference between Victorians and Australians overall seems very odd. The NSW figure would have to be under 50% for that to be true.
It also shows how times change. Aston was THE mortgage belt electorate around 1990, consistently with the highest home purchase rate in the country, but the area has progressed through the suburban life cycle and more people now own their property.
I was also mystified by the bi-polar age graph at first. I was wondering if the baby bonus had had that much effect on the birth rate until I realised the 15-19 and 20-24 age groups were the only 5 year categories.
I checked those same address figures with the following publication.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/2007-08/08rp23.pdf
p.13 says 28.2% of Aston residents were at the same address 5 years earlier. The relevant other figures for same address are on p.128 and were 35.5% for NSW, 34.4% for Victoria and 37.6% for Australia.
Thanks Antony – I’m playing around with a new way to generate these types of things, and I had the spreadsheet pointing at the wrong data set (some 12 month period set, rather than the Aston and Vic 5 year period). So that’s all fixed now.
Aston is still pretty high at over 60% of people not changing houses in the previous 5 years – probably reflecting, as you say, it’s history as the mortgage belt king. Some of the outer metro Brisbane seats will probably go the same way over the next two elections once all the Greenfield housing sites fill up.
That explains why the scale on that graph just changed then. You’re probably aware of that Parliamentary Library publication. If not, you’l find it useful as a double check on your data.
I shoulld apply for a job at Quadrant.
The figures in that APH publication are a little different from the raw Community Profile data from the census with the housing numbers – by a few percent at most. I’d imagine that comes from the way the APH folks treated the “not-stated” categories – there’s a number of ways to do it.
I grew up in Aston. The age profile is quite illuminating becuase it shows that young people get the hell out of there as soon as they can and move somewhere interesting, but then have to move back because they can’t afford to live anywhwere else.
Also, I predict that, irrespective of the national polls, Aston will fall to Labor at the next election. Yes, it has been a safe (and in 2004 a very, very safe) liberal seat but that was because of an unpopular state labor decision, not a genuine conservative lean.
“I should apply for a job at Quadrant.”
LOL
Antony you would feel very uncomfortable there with your emphasis on accuracy and your prediliction for comparing like with like.
DrMick – you’ll see a fair bit of that sort of age based behaviour in some electorates and it get’s really pronounced in some rural electorates. Tomorrow’s profile is on Barker and it suffers this particular affliction pretty heavily.
#9
I grew up in Aston too and I doubt Labor are a serious chance to win unless there is an utter landslide. If anything, Aston is moving further away from Labor- it was a marginal during the 80’s but has been held by the Libs since 1990. Areas like Rowville used to be the end of the earth; now they’re filled with expensive new houses. It’s now an affluent and fairly religious electorate. And most local state seats are Liberal held despite Labor winning easily in 2006.
If Victoria has a redistribution before the election, it’s possible Aston could get pushed out of Forest Hill/Heathmont and further into Bayswater/Boronia, which would make it more marginal (as well as being more logical geographically). But under normal circumastances I’d be very surprised if Labor won it.