The near conclusion of the long running saga called the Coalition’s Demographic Train Wreck.
After spending the last year and a half ferreting out every bit of 2007 election polling I could get my hands on, I think we might have – finally – a good set of estimates for the two party preferred vote at the 2007 election by age cohort. Most pollsters have broad brush age cohorts that are over 15 years wide, but none alone have sample sizes large enough to justify breaking down the age results into smaller chunks. But now, we can look a little deeper.
Most of the data for this didn’t come from just the usual suspects (although the usual suspects were certainly helpful), but from a mix of major pollster data, unpublished polling and exit polling that was undertaken by a surprisingly large number of groups either very, very close to election day, or in the case of exit polling – after election day itself. So thank you to all who willingly (or often grudgingly!) contributed to this – you know who you are.
The most difficult part was sorting the 50-60’s from the 60’s and over, and those three cohorts contain the largest uncertainty. We can’t really give a margin of error for it because of the mathematics used to derive it ( in most cases I didn’t have access to respondent level data, but had age cohorts bundled into 5 and ten year groups)– but it’s fair to say that the over 60’s may be a point undercooked for Labor while the 50-60’s may be a point overcooked. But the results below are, by far, the highest probability result. Another reason I’m confident in the figures is that if you weight these results by the age breakdown of the electoral roll, the ALP two party preferred comes out at a national 52.8% – which is only 0.1% off the actual election result.
The most interesting thing about the result is the way the two party preferred numbers work in terms of the actual size of the voting populations in each age cohort. What really stands out is the way the Coalition avoided suffering a complete wipe out in 2007 singularly because of the level of support they enjoy in Generation Blue – that group of people born before 1947. The chart below has the ALP two party preferred vote by age cohort, as well as the proportion of the electoral roll that each of those cohorts make up.
You know you’re a political tragic if you looked at that chart and went “Faark me dead!”. The consequences of it are pretty profound. To tweak the gravitas of it even further – the average ALP two party preferred vote among the under 60’s was an astonishing 56%. Sit on that thought for a moment and ponder.
Generation Blue are an interesting lot – their relative love affair with the conservative side of politics isn’t merely something that has come with age, but appears to have been a long term pattern of electoral behaviour.
Using public Newspoll data going back to 1987, much of it unearthed from the dungeons of the Newspoll database by Ian Watson, if we look at the size of the Coalition primary vote by periods of birth, we can see that those born before 1947 have had a large partisan lean toward the Coalition:
Those 2007 figures for the cohorts born after 1947 are a few points skewed to Labor, as it looks like some of the data was apparently taken before The Narrowing happened (and remember, don’t let that blip in 1998 fool you, that was the One Nation effect where preferences in that age cohort flowed back very strongly to the Coalition). That said, using non-Newspoll figures, Gen Blue had a Coalition primary vote at the last election in the low to mid 50’s. It’s also worth noting that the old story about people getting more conservative in their vote as they get older doesn’t hold true. Rather than a gradual increase, there seems to be a small “one off” structural jump that occurs in a person’s late 20’s early 30’s and from there the vote merely wanders around.
As a specific cohort, the pre-1947 group have been between 6 and 16 points more favourable to the Coalition primary vote than the average of all other demographics that have come after them, and Generation Blue has done this for at least the last 8 elections.
In 2007, the youngest members of Generation Blue had just turned 60, and combined they made up over 26% of the electoral roll. We can actually see their composition by looking at a basic age distribution chart using the 2006 Census data:
Unfortunately for Generation Blue – and the Coalition, it must be said – these folks are now running into the pointy end of human mortality. To highlight how quickly the political demographics can change, we can chart Australian mortality rates using the latest ABS Life Tables:
On the left is the probability that a person of a given age will die in the next 12 months. As you can see, after 60 the mortality rates start increasing, after 75 they climb dramatically.
This brings about a quite rapid political realignment that we are just starting to see. In 2006, Generation Blue made up 24.5% of the Australian population aged 20 or over. In 2011 that proportion will reduce to 19.5% from mortality alone. By 2016 it’s down to 14% and by 2021 it will be sitting around 9.5% – and that’s using the assumption of zero immigration. So the real figures will actually manifest as a sharper decline because of the age distribution of Australia immigration that will further water down their overall population proportion.
“But Possum, what does all this mean for the Coalition vote”, I hear you ask – and what a mighty fine question that is! 
To highlight the impact of Gen Blue mortality on the Coalition two party preferred, let’s take a squiz at a couple of hypothetical situations and model them out.
Firstly, let us assume that in 2006 there was an election (coinciding with the census data) and Gen Blue voted 57/43 like they did in the actual 2007 election. Let us also assume that everybody else in Australia outside of Gen Blue voted 50/50. Let us also say that for hypothetical elections in 2011, 2016 and 2021 – Gen Blue continues to vote 57/43 while the rest of the population votes 50/50. This what what the results look like:
As we can see, natural attrition from the mortality rate alone knocks around half a point of two party preferred vote off the Coalitions end result every 5 years. Yet, the rest of the country doesn’t actually vote 50/50. So let’s run two more models where firstly, the rest of the country votes 53/47 to the ALP (which is close to the 1998 and 2001 results), and another where they vote 56/44 to the ALP as they did in the 2007 election.
By 2011, if the country votes exactly the same way they did in 2007, the election result will be, at best, 53.5/46.5 to the ALP. “At best” for the Coalition because, remember, this ignores Australian migration where the vote of migrants heavily favours the ALP.
Taking migration into account, we should expect that in the 2010 election, the ALP should generically have around a 0.5% two party preferred head start on their 2007 election result.
By 2016 the ALP will have a generic head start of around 1.3% in their two party preferred – but taking into account migration projections, that will actually be closer to 2 percentage points in real terms.
This creates a great deal of political grief for the Coalition – for without reforming their political ideology to be more reflective of the views and values of people currently under 60 in Australia, their only real chance to stay in the game in the short term is to start stuffing around with the electoral roll, reducing the number of younger voters turning out to the ballot box – something we witnessed in the final term of the Howard government. Yet they are no longer in a position to do that, suffering as they are from the legislative impotency of the Opposition benches.
But that style of franchise bastardry does little more than play around the fringes, the reality of demographic change is close to swamping the efficacy of any further attempts in the future to manipulate the roll.
To prevent the Coalition from facing a generation or more in the political wilderness, not only do the turgid old dinosaurs like the Bronwyn Bishops, the Kevin Andrews and the Tony Abbotts of the world need to be removed from the public face of the Liberal Party, but the views they represent – views which have only minority support among those under 60 – need to be isolated from the Liberal Party mainstream platforms.
The problem with having a political party where the membership is mostly over 60, is that the political party itself starts to represent little more than the views of those over 60. That’s all good and well while there are plenty of them around – but when their numbers start to fade, and when the views they pursue are alien to the large majority of those outside of that cohort – the road to irrelevance is pretty much charted.
For decades the Liberal Party has ridden on the coat tails of the ballot box premium that Generation Blue has provided them, allowing them to effectively ignore the fact that on most issues they have often been on the wrong side of public opinion as seen through the eyes of those born after World War 2. Without pivoting towards some form of modernity, and doing it pretty quickly, they will be up shit creek without an electoral paddle in a sinking demographic canoe – to really strangle a metaphor to death.
The problem, of course, becomes one of trying to break the institutional grip that Labor has on younger demographics. They have to hope that Labor doesn’t posses a voter premium among Boomers and Gen X and Y that the Liberals did with Gen Blue – for if Labor does hold an unbreakable premium there of 6 to 8 two party preferred points, then the next Liberal Party Prime Minister is probably still in high school.
Unfortunately for the Liberal Party – Labor probably does.
66 Comments
A bewdy, Poss.
I have one tiny suggestion – what about representing the data in the first graph as one of those population charts that look like a lumpy Christmas tree with ALP/LNP as the two sides?
Another reason why it’s “at best” for the Coalition is that within the 60+ cohort, we can expect that their voters are beginning to concentrate towards the top end (the oldest Baby Boomers are now part of that cohort), so the vote can be expected to drop slightly faster.
Caf, with the projections, I actually followed Gen Blue by birth year – so I projected just the those born in 47 or earlier with the 57/43 and where everyone else was allocated the 50/50, 53/47 or 56/44 to the ALP.
We should start to see Coalition vote in the 50+ or 55+ age cohorts that most pollsters use start to drop by a few points over the next 5 years or so because the 50-60 age group is a pretty big one – and as we can see, they vote substantially different from the 60+ folks. We’ve already seen it a bit with the quarterly Newspolls over the last few years.
Yep, got that – I just meant that within the “born in 47 or earlier” mob, a uniform 57/43 distribution is pretty unlikely (though of course that’s all you can assume given the data). The oldest of them are likely to be the bluest.
Aah, I’m with you now!
I was looking back on some old gallup polling a while ago and there was a pre-WW2 group that seemed to be quite pro-labor, born around 1900-1920 thereabouts, mostly blokes.
Can’t imagine there’d be a lot of them about these days.
As a migrant (arrived in 74) and belonging to the Gen Blue cohort, dealing with the entrenched, stolid, self-satisfied, stupid smugness of the locals of the same generation in their almost religious belief in the conservative side has been and remains a source of endless “gnashing of teeth and rending of garments” for me! Damn them!
To what extent can their position and attitudes be attributed to their access to education in their formative years. I gather that the diggers in WW1 were far more aware of social equity issues than they are. What happened? Did the Depression take the fight out of them? The Cold War and all the brainwashing they were subjected to?
Poss, is it possible to plot the 1987 data in the same way as in table 1? I’m curious about whether the impending conservative vote collapse will turn out to be a non-event, for the same reason that repeated forecasts of a collapse in church congregations (based on the age of those congregations) has been to date. Basically, as people age, they become more likely to vote conservative and go to church. This trend is not influenced by date of birth. So, is there any polling evidence for this theory?
DrMick, I wouldn’t know where to begin to get the data for the 87 election – I doubt that such data even exists with any decent level of certainty.
On the issue of people becoming more conservative in voting behaviour as they age, we can see the data from every election since 1987 in that chart above called “Coalition Primary Vote by Birth Period” and it doesn’t really exist except for that jump to the right in people’s late 20’s/early 30’s. But that jump is only worth a few points and doesnt make up for the loss the Coalition are taking with Gen Blue fading.
Those born between 1948 and 1957 are, if anything, trending towards Labor as they get older!
So while there may be a few points at best in the theory – there isn’t a great deal of evidence to suggest it even exists. If it did exist, we should have seen evidence for it the 50-60 age group over the last 3 elections, but we haven’t .
I think it’s mostly an old wives tale.
Hi Poss
Very in-depth analysis. I always said (based on a gut feeling) that post-2007 the next Liberal PM isn’t even sitting in parliament yet. Also explains why the present rabble seems to be so out of touch especially on such issues as Climate Change. Aw Poss you always do a great job in keeping the conservative bogey man at bay. Thanks.
“The turgid old dinosaurs like the Bronwyn Bishops, the Kevin Andrews and the Tony Abbotts of the world need to be removed from the public face of the Liberal Party”
Particularly true – not just to appeal to the younger voters. These are the same candidates that still espouse the policies of the defeated Howard government, policies which are electorally unpopular.
Maybe there won’t be a next Liberal PM. Maybe the next threat to the ALP will come from the left. Maybe I’m dreaming.
Possum I’m fairly sure you’d be aware of this but that jump to the right that occurs in late 20’s early 30’s also occurs very strongly in the US. Its when large numbers of moderates have kids. All of a sudden security and “values” become much more important.
I’d be interested if there is a more detailed breakdown of the 60+ block. Every other demographic is sampled in 5 year intervals. Is the 60+ block uniform in its blueness? Or is there some trend?
I suspect a key with all the demographics younger than 60 is that their formative teen years occurred from 1960 onwards.
This is the best political news since … well, since the last federal election.
EP, that is interesting – Australia and the US also share somewhat this political trend for pre-47 voters leaning rightward:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/Democrats-Best-Among-Generation-Baby-Boomers.aspx?CSTS=alert
If it wasnt for the Reagan revolution on Republican ID, the trend would be really prominent.
Getting more detail on the 60+ block is difficult because those groups above 60 make up smaller and smaller sized population proportions, so in any given poll there will be few and fewer of them the older up the chain you go.
It does appear that 60 year old voters are slightly less likely than 70 year old voters to be Coalition supporters by a few points, but that the numbers quickly stabilise as you move into voters currently in their 60’s. So from about 63-67 onwards, the numbers appear to pretty homogenous.
Singha number 6
Your post brings to mind a salient quote from John Stuart Mill:
I suspect, though cannot prove, that lower educational levels dispose people to conservative tendencies. Perhaps Possum could rummage the data to see if there is a link, or if it’s just my imagination.
I think it’s just your imagination Cuppa
Possum, those born pre-1947 didn’t have the same access to tertiary education that later generations did. This is not to belittle Generation Blue, but surely it’s a matter of fact that their educational attainment is not as high as those who have come after, simply because “in their day” the number of people who got a higher education was lower than it is today.
Thats just stupid Cuppa. You’re talking about the party of the rich v the party of the working man, in generalised terms. Rich people are often better educated than working people.
Possum, Do these numbers ignore things like the 10 year trend where people get sick of the government, worry about debt, and things like that? It seems that given the coalition has spent more time in government over the last 60 years, they would suffer those effects in their numbers more?
cyclo,
The numbers ignore them. If you look at the Coalition primary vote chart up there, the cohorts all moved roughly together – first towards the Libs in 96 and then away from them in 2007, yet the gap – the magnitude – between the cohorts remained.
So even with the broader electoral cycle, the demographic impact will still be playing out.
Kudos for the analysis, Possum.
As a “very active activist” Gen Bluer ALP stalwart, I can identify as critical a section of my Gen who tuned into Bill Haley & Elvis etc in the mid 50s, supported the USA Civil Rights, the end of the WAP & would take to the streets to support the “Aboriginal” referendum. The Vietnam War – and it was still widely popular until 1967 – was the first social issue lead by the ALP; tho, in Oz, it’s leaders were not Boomers but Gen Blue & earlier – in the c1970 4 Corners programme on the Vietnam Moritorium, all the Queenslanders featured were (I can personally assure you) Gen Blue (most born 1943-5).
To get to Singha’s questions: Had it not been for the Vietnam War, Gen Blue would have been much bluer! The party which fronted civil rights issues (WAP, “Aboriginal” referendum) and was more committed to “Women’s Lib” issues, nominating women for parliamentary (mainly Senate) seats & supporting the rights of married women (inc mothers) to work, and “better education” (inc university, through Commonwealth Scholarships) was the Liberal Party; moreover, this was the era of Arthur Calwell, the ALP’s “Twelve [later more] faceless men” and dominance of the ALP by the (socially conservative) Right.
None of the cited issues was overly popular with traditionalists of either party; but the Liberals were then more liberal (often far more so) that the dominant ALP Right. I frequently heard, as a reason for not sending their kids to university, “You educate them, then they go out and vote Tory”. “Women’s Lib” was highly controversial, especially with “women who want to be women” (ie, those who felt entitled to stop working after marriage) and they were probably a majority, even into the 1970s – again, the “breakthrough” women tended to be middle-class, professional & Liberal. Add to that the ALP’s whole “Split” / “Reds under the Bed” era, Singha, and the number of European migrants (inc those who lived in colonies, especially in Asia) who had bitter personal experiences with the spread of Communism in Easter Europe & East Asia, who saw no difference between the democratic left and Marxism; then add in the bias of what was popularly called “Tory Rags” (Murdoch, Fairfax, Packer & independent presses).
In the post-1960 election era, the ALP was so far right it was cringe-worthy. Only Gough Whitlam’s election as ALP Deputy (1960) held out hope to civil libertarians, anti-racists, supporters of higher participation in Higher Ed, women’s rights. His election as ALP Leader (& Opposition Leader) in 1967 saw the ALP position itself to win the “Youthquaker” vote and halt/reverse the hæmeorrhage of liberals to the Liberal party. Since then, the party seems to have held on to Boomer and later demographics.
Another spectacular analysis Possum. Thank you.
I wonder do Coalition members read your stuff. Maybe it’s better they don’t, unless they believe they can do something to reverse the trends you describe.
Cuppa
The stupid conservative meme has a long history, and is pretty much entirely false.
The most famous recent example was the ’stupid states vote bush graph’ that went around. You can see it at http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm.
It hooked even normally skeptical publications like The Economist, which also very quickly published a retraction, and a reasonable if rough counter at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2692859
Sorry about the lack of hotlinks.
Ooh, they format automatically. Noooice.
Thanks Poss – looks like Howard used up Peter Costello’s “window of opportunity”. What a shame
I can also add some state history that might explain Singha’s question. In Qld, a labor stronghold for most of the 30s and 40s, successive very corrupt Labor state governments gave the party a very bad name by the 50s, and enabled decades of National Party rule to follow. Labor only really recovered in Qld when Peter Beattie and Wayne Swan (among others) became party secretary and rebuilt the party in the 80s. NSW Labor should be warned that they are in danger of repeating history.
Someone unafraid to venture into dark and evil parts of cyber-space should ost a link to this on Bolt’s blog. I’d love to just watch Bolt or Ackerman read this.
Could the “Cold War/reds under the beds/MaCarthism/yellow peril” era of the 50’s, which would have been the formative years of many of today’s ‘oldies’, be a factor?
Three suggestions for the why the blues stick with the conservatives:
1. The blues had to deal with more uncertainty than any of the other generations (war, depression, ‘death match’ between commies and the West.
2. The blues were born into a solidly cultural/ethnic Brittanic/Australia that disappeared from under their feet with the migration boom.
3. The blues were raised in an authoritarian, churchy, male-dominated pre-relativist, pre post-modern world.
snap fredex, missed yours before I posted mine.
There are quite significant swings over time within cohorts, so all is not lost for the Liberals. But they certainly need to get of their blues bums and think of ways of siphoning off a percentage of the other cohorts.
I would predict that as the younger voters overwhelm the blues, boomers will turn blue in greater numbers.
The mechanism will be that the younger voters will claim a greater share of the pie and the boomers will be wanting to defend their share.
Perhaps this is why Turnbull went for the private health rebate issue.
Is ‘pre post-modern’ a fancy way of saying ‘modern’?
A persepctive on this from a labour historian. I would love to see a breakdown of Gen Blue into its component parts. The education thing is indeed a furphy. Just look at Hitler’s Germany – the higher a German’s level of education the more likely he or she was to follow Hitler. The working class was the one section of German society that was most resistant to Nazi propaganda.
The thing I think is decisive is Possum’s breakdown of numbers within the “generation” (which is in fact a range of generations). It would appear that roughly 4% of the Aussie population is over 79 whereas about 14% is accounted for by the younger cohorts of Blue. Someone who was 18 in 1949 would be 78 today. So really it would be more accurate to label this generation “Generation Menzies” as the vast bulk of them entered into adult life during his somnolent reign.
Knowing what happened in the 1930s and 1940s – the rebuilding of the trade union movement, the growth of the Communist Party, the “War Against Facsism” and increasing electoral success for the ALP (in the ’40s at least) you might expect the small very old group to be more left-wing than the “generation” as a whole. We may never know for sure as the tiny sample sizes are surely problematic.
The other thing that is of course very important is the seizmic shift in cultural attitudes on race, gender, sexuality etc which occurred in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Given Howard’s predilection for the wedge and waging cultural wars, it’s little wonder that those who came into adult life before the late ’60s should have been more willing to respond. This of course is Possum’s main polemical point and I think he’s 100% right.
Rudd Labor may inadvertently be in the process of creating a whole new bunch of Gen Blues for the Liberals.
It is said in an Age article today that the Govt would look at the possibility of changing access to Superannuation to the age of 67 in line with the Pension changes.
Needless to say that every baby boomer, anyone 50 and over with Super will be mightily concerned at this prospect. And as always the horse ’self interest’ will win this race if it came down to a choice between one party that was going to limit and one that was not.
My advice to the Labor Party – don’t even go there.
BOP
yep
That’s amazing – I had always assumed that people got more pro-conservative as they got older.
As someone born in 1973 I note that the graph of Coalition Primary Vote by Birth Period jumps from 1963-1972 and then goes to 1974-1989.
John
Please do not vote. You will ruin the stats.
Some simplistic assumptions/assertions about wealth and affiliation:
The right in most countries is a coalition of the rich, business owners and the socially conservative working class (values voters).
The left is a coalition of the intellectual left (Journalists/Academics/Doctors Wives) and the Unionised workforce.
There is therefore a mixture of education levels on both sides.
How does union membership play into this equation? Is Gen Blue somewhat anti-labour due to its union ties? As union power has decayed over the years have subsequent generations become less concerned about union activism?
Ha!
John, there were a couple of years that could have slipped through the net because of the timing of elections in conjunction with the polling using the standard 3 age cohorts.
So rather than split the cohorts up into a larger number of overlapping groups with data points missing, I just sort of, er… left you out! Sorry about that
EP went:
That’s a good question.
Any Labor or Union historians around that could shed some light?
Poss, that is bloody fantastic data mining. I am very impressed.
You have answered questions I have often asked myself, and given up because there was no data.
Especially the bit about do the over sixties vote that way because they are over sixty, or is it because their cohort votes that way.
More power to your elbow.
‘…the next Liberal Party Prime Minister is probably still in high school.’
I believe you may just be right there. As I see it, and I believe it is being reflected in the US as well, the next conservative movement is being spawned amongst this mid-adolescant demographic. In the US they are the Ron Paul Libertarians-a quaint mix of conservative respect for your elders and youthful radicalism-and I detect the wellspring of support for that economically conservative, culturally progressive style of politics growing in popularity here.
Great analysis. Maybe the next Liberal PM is in parliament now and the one after will never be born- as per the Liberals in the UK (Howard as Lloyd George???). After looking at when serious climate change effects arrive, and when peak oil really starts to bite (both around the same time), I have been thinking about betting on when Australian politics becomes a contest between the Greens and Labor. I think I might now put serious money – say as much as $20 – on that. I thought the Libs had a window of around 15 years to reposition to fight Labor for the centre-right. Maybe they only have half that.
Peter T
I think you will find that for most of that demographic their working lives coincided with a period of high union membership, partly as a result of “closed shop” agreements between Employers and Unions and the relevant Industrial Relations Tribunals.
Most, therefore, have a relevantly benevolent/tolerant attitude to unions and this partly explains why Howards radical IR laws and demonisation of unions had little effect on the members of this demographic, both male and female.
Basically, most of them have had experience either as a Union Member or the spouse of one and they enjoyed a substantial improvement in their pay and working conditions as a result of that. They do not generally see unions and their Officials in the same light as that portraid by the Coalition in their political campaign and advertising.
This was just another reason why that advertising conflicted with elector’s experiences and proved ineffective and even to greater extent, so easy to counter by Labor and the Unions. Even the churches got involved which only served to reinforce their personal experiences and opinions.
I wish I could remember where I saw the polling comparison, but apparently people had much more negative attitudes towards unions in the late 1980s, when their membership was already in decline and strike figures had plummeted than in the early 1970s when strikes were at their highest level since 1919.
This would seem to indicate that the common assumption that union militancy automatically pisses people off is not correct. When unions were achieving improved wages and conditions – when they seemed to be powerful – they had an attraction, most obviously of course to their members and to people who might perhaps have wished they had a decent union to represent them.
My own research has been into an earlier period of militancy during the First World War when the anti-union sentiment in the press was as rabid as you could imagine. What is interesting, though, is that you never come across in the papers of that time (even in the most reactionary papers like the Argus or the Telegraph) an argument that unions per se were useless or wrong. The assumption that unionism was a good thing was so hegemonic that they had instead to appeal to an image of sensible, arbitration attending union officials – of moderation rather than militancy.
In any case, attitudes to unionism cannot explain the crucial difference between Gen Blue and the Baby Boomers. The latter experienced, in their youth and early adulthood, the biggest (and most successful) strikewave in Australian history – at least since 1919. Strikes remained historically high up until 1981 and union membership was at its peak around that time. And yet the Baby Boomers vote Labor.
To add to the discussion about unions: roughly one third of union members consistently vote Lib/Nat. That is reasonably consistent regardless of the overall proportion of the workforce who are union members. Andrew Leigh wrote an essay on this:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=891890
While you can postulate that the ALP gains an advantage in close elections with higher union membership – I think you should decouple union membership and the Labor vote. Union membership has been high during Tory governments, and declining during ALP governments. The ALP has always had to appeal to non-union member voters to get 50%+1 of the vote.
This is where Howard & Co and now Turnbull with his Howard left-overs totally miss read the electorate.
I was a Union Member and Official in three Unions for forty years. On average, the membership make-up of a Trade Union closely resembles the general community make-up of voting intention. ie, 40% ALP, 40% LNP and 20% minor party/swingers. Although in some unions it can go up as high as 80% LNP (Clerical & Professional Unions) and 80% ALP (Construction, Metals & Mining Unions) but on the whole it balances out.
By demonising Unions in general, Howard was trying to sell a message that even his own support base would not accept because it went against their own experiences as either members of a union at least at some point of time in their life or their current experience.
Even people surveyed who had never been a member of a Union generally don’t have negative feelings towards Unions either because they have benefited directly from Union activism and involvement in their workplace ie improved Award conditions or Enterprise Agreement/Wage Case decisions, or they have had no negative or direct experience of Unions but accept that they have a legitimate role to play in the industrial system.
These were the people targeted by Howard’s media campaign but as we have seen, without any success. The reason for this is because it is very difficult to change a persons value/belief systems and not because of the Union/ALP counter campaign. These people have in reality been exposed to an ongoing campaign by the Conservatives to undermine their belief in the value of Unions since the time of Whitlam.
Trade Unions have certainly declined in Membership since the 1970’s and there are a number of reasons for that but the Conservative media campaign to undermine confidence and public opinion of Unions was marginal at best and only had an effect on voters who had never had direct experience with a Union or Members of a Union or worked in workplaces where there had never been any Union presence which tended to be the majority of workplaces in Australia anyway.
Howard had a threefold aim with Workchoices. To destroy the Union Movement and thereby disable Labor’s most important agency for recruitment of Members, campaign support workforce and financing.
To unwind the Industrial Tribunal System and bring all Australian workers under one system whereby all pay and conditions would be deregulated and effectively under the control of an agency of the Federal Government.
By emasculating the ALP, Howard could effectively ensure control of the Commonwealth Government in perpetuity for the Liberal Party and for him, an extended period as PM to eclipse Menzies record.
Fortunately, the Australian people saw through Howard’s diabolical Master plan and consigned him to the dust bin of history where he belongs and good riddance.
People have been arguing since the 1980s that for demographic reasons Labor will be (now is) the natural party of government, and this is consistent with it. However, if you have done the analysis, I’d be interested in seeing the AES political identity question by age over time. In every election there is a lot of ‘noise’ alongside the long-term political trends, coming from shifts in the issue cycle and many ephemeral issues that affect votes in the short term but don’t have any long-term impact on party allegiances.
The introduction of conscription (with the likelihood of fighting an unpopular war in Vietnam) politicised Australian 18 year olds.
Those who experienced that cynical exercise realised that politics are worth thinking about.
They may be in their late 5os, but they are still unlikely to vote the way their parents did.
The sooner the Lib/Nats pass into history the better – we already have one rightist party – the ALP. The Greens should be the alternate party.
I can’t help but wonder whether the predictions of the LNPs demise are a bit premature. It seems to me that there is some basis in the theory that whichever party is in power determines the politics of those coming of age during that government i.e. in the opposite direction of the government. As someone who came of age at the end of the Howard government, I am already noticing that some of my friends (who were a little late in development) are becoming fairly anti-Labor in their views. The interesting thing though, is that quite a few of them are heading to the Greens.
Apart from politics this information may have some other important marketing implications.
Media may be working on the wrong assumptions and trying to appeal too much to the ‘right’ when that is actually the Gen Blue demographic.
Inadvertently the media may be annoying more of their customers than pleasing when it comes to political news and opinion. Looking at those age break downs the right wing media wont be doing too well with the 18-39 bracket.
Thanks everybody who took some trouble to answer my questions. It has been very educational. I wonder if David Richards is on the money when he suggests that the Greens may well be the natural alternative to the ALP’s positioning itself on the right – which leaves the Lib/Nats room only on the far, far right.
It also explains coalition policy of the Howard years.
The only significant thing I can think of that would cause a sea change in attitude around and after 1947 would be the introduction of TV in 1956.
People born after 1947 would be just entering high school as TV started to become common place in 1958-59 and later. High shool is that place were the kids start to develop their intellectual bent I imagine…but I’m no expert on this, just tossing ideas.
TV has a powerful influence on kids popular culture and high school is where teenagers want to belong to the popular group. The likes of Johnny O’Keefe, Elvis, The Beatles and Rolling Stones…etc were taking off in the late fifties early 60s on Aussie TV and radio. TV also makes the world smaller and brings youngsters and teenagers in their formative into contact with the rest of the world’s cultures and FACTS.
I think experience tells us the more knowledgeable and familiar you are with something the less you fear it and the more able you are able to empathise with it.
It would be interesting if it were the result of TV (now also internet, world travel) and the way it shrinks the world and (maybe) leads to a less harsh more left political philosophy as it would mean the change is permanent.
The people born before 1947 are the last of a kind who formed their world and political views pre TV, those born after would be more likely to be Labor voters. That would mean of course that the Liberal Party is becoming less and less representative as time goes on.
The big problem for them then is that Labor has taken the center of politics forcing them to the right. The Greens have the left and pick up any leaks from Labor. And the some of the hard core Liberals are still banging on about their traditional (Howard values).
Also guess work and assumption….but I am sure people would have examined all this type of stuff a hundred times over.
Poss
slightly off subject but:
I dont give a ratsarse who andrew C is
I’d say it was largely an educational thing.
In the fifties, when most of this cohort was leaving school etc, jobs were easy to get.
This had two effects: firstly, it encouraged people to leave school early, meaning that they left with a very basic education. Secondly, it instilled in them the idea that it’s easy to get work – look at how well they did, despite their lack of education!
From my observations, there is a lot of difference between someone today in their late fifties and someone in their late sixties, far more than between late forties and late fifties.
The lack of higher education in this cohort means that they’re fuzzy thinkers (generalising, of course). They thus base a lot of their decision making on emotional triggers and are very rigid in their thinking. I find that it’s common, when arguing with someone in this age group, for them to evade following an argument through to its conclusion – they will simply shift the goal posts.
Like all people, they see their own education as good (noone wants to admit to being uneducated) so anything that isn’t what they did at school is not (my mother argues that her education is better than mine because she can recite slabs of poetry by heart and knows how to parse a sentence).
Their relatively easy run in life (I know SOME of them were in the Depression and most went through the war, but the war in Australia wasn’t that harsh) means that they genuinely can’t understand those who are doing it tough.
They also tend to be insular – when migrants first came to Australia, they were like men from Mars. My mother can clearly remember the first time she tasted – in her twenties – that exotic, cheesecake.
So fear campaigns work well this cohort. They react emotionally and then bunker down and ignore opposing arguments.
This is a fantastic analysis. Thanks Possum – you have taken psephology beyond Anthony Green nerdiness and made it really sexy (in a good way, not a Cronulla Sharks-type way).
Fine, fine work Possum.
Confirms what I’ve felt intuitively for some time. For the sake of a competitive political system I do hope there’s enough neurons left in what passes for the collective brains trust of the Coalition to really absorb and ponder the implications of this.
Anyone involved in selling or marketing knows that brand preferences become hard wired as you get older and the older the customer the harder it is to get them to change behaviour. Politics, I suspect, is no different.
The Coalition do need a really big brand makeover and everything I’ve seen lately confirms that they just don’t get it. Banging on about “worst since Whitlam” etc etc won’t cut it with anyone still of working age. People born in the 1930s and 1940s cut their political teeth in the Menzies era when the ALP = reds under beds etc etc. Born in the 1950s, you grew up with the swinging 60s, Vietnam and “It’s Time”. And chances are you loved Gough.
As others have commented, the real opportunity here is being seized by the Greens, as in Fremantle. In a few years time the political landscape is likely to see the ALP firmly astride the centre and under attack both from the Left (ie Greens) and Right (ie Coalition) but with no viable alternative government. Troubling.
Thanks to those who answered on my Union-ALP query.
As a general trend do people in their formative years react against or for the government? Is the most impact felt from good or bad government policy?
E.g. Someone earlier commented about Vietnam and conscription being a much bigger issue for people around conscriptable age than the older generation.
The blue, green & red lines seem to have a soft upward trend. From just eye-balling it, it appears to be about +3% for those groups over 20 years.
And of course, none of us know which new memes are going to capture the imagination in the coming years, or how the ALP will perform in the medium-long term.
I note that J.S. Mill was criticising conservatives from a classical liberal (not social democratic) perspective. I agree with him. Unfortunately, conservatives (both left & right) dominate politics because it’s such an easy position to take. Challenging the status quo is always a political challenge.
@Thomas Pain #53
The issue of conscription and the Vietnam war was a huge influence of those born after 1947 and subject to conscription at 20 when the age of majority was 21 would affect this generation directly. I was born in 1949 and grew up in a comfortable environment in a comfortable, liberal-type suburb, going to a comfortable well provided school. I have been Labor/Progressive in my views since I was old enough to vote. The turning point in my political opinions (before I was old enough to vote) was conscription, the Vietnam war and the “reds-under-the-bed” fear politics of my teen years.
My experiences were almost identical to those of Gail at post 60. I confirm that conscription, Vietnam and “reds under the bed” were over-riding influences.
Zoomster (post number 55) points out a lot of the co-incidental changes that were happening which contributed to this shift (increasing tertiary Ed), but even conservative University student populations were radicalised by conscription and Vitenam. There was social change as well (rock ‘n Roll, feminism, Green politics) but conscription and Vietnam were catalysts for changing Australia’s 20 year olds for ever.
I’m not even talking tertiary education – education beyond the age of 15.
As a teacher, my observation would be that critical thinking doesn’t ‘click’ (it may be taught!) before Year 10 (so traditional leaving age).
I know it’s a bit much to condemn a whole generation as fuzzy thinkers but (again) my observation is that people who left school at 15 have limited critical thinking skills.
EnergyPedant @36, I am an example of a leftie who hates unions. To me, Labor is not at all the party I’d like to have in power, it’s just better than the Liberals. Labor is a one-issue party, and does not adequately represent the left except in the case of labor unions. The turning point came for me during the electricity strikes in Queensland in the 80s, when I lived in Gladstone and realised that this was not just some remote group of people making life difficult, this was warfare between the unions and the people. Strong-arm union tactics used on my wife in the 90s only made me more resolute. Queensland teachers are on strike today and I have nothing but contempt for their tactics – they’re affecting me much more than they’re affecting the government. The sooner there’s an alternative progressive party in Australia, the happier I’ll be.