The 2019 federal election was meant to be a “youthquake”. On the back of all-time-high youth enrolments after the same-sex marriage survey, some pundits tipped a generational changing of the guard.
Needless to say it didn’t eventuate. As I wrote for Crikey at the time, “such predictions were blinded by hope, overlooking the inconvenient fact of our rapidly ageing population”. And all those boomers disproportionately backed Scott Morrison.
Fast-forward to the 2022 election. Youth enrolment was similarly high after a flurry of last-minute sign-ups, and Labor has declared victory amid a sea of independents and Greens. Are we witnessing a belated youthquake?
I wouldn’t call it such; the electoral map is still moving and its complex, contradictory shifts aren’t reducible to one variable. But early signs suggest young people made their presence felt in unprecedented ways.
Teals and Greens got a bump from young renters
Much has already been written about how women and the “moral middle class” have reasserted their political agency by flipping Liberal strongholds to independents. But it wasn’t simply that the affluent changed their minds — their electorates are also demographically changing.
The broader population might be getting older, but many inner-suburban seats, such as Victoria’s Kooyong and Higgins, have got younger as students and young renters have clustered in formerly old-money neighbourhoods that are now university and nightlife hubs. As Labor-aligned pollster Kos Samaras said in another Crikey article of mine: “Kooyong now boasts the highest number of voters aged under 24 in Victoria.” We saw this at the Victorian state election too.
The Queensland seats that delivered for the Greens are similarly young. In Griffith and Brisbane, 45% and 46% of Brisbane voters respectively are under 40, some of the highest proportions in the country (the average is low-mid 30s). Sure the Greens’ much-hyped “ground game” is commendable, but they’re playing on favourable turf.
After years of benefiting from Labor’s base fracturing, the Liberals are feeling the demographic squeeze too. They can no longer court the outer suburbs and mining regions while forsaking their trendifying metropolitan seats without consequence.
Homeowners still frustrated Labor
Another generational issue seems to have factored in: home ownership. The Coalition’s vote held up and Labor failed to make inroads in some suburban seats, such as Longman in Brisbane and Casey in Melbourne.
This is a similar dynamic to the 2019 election, in which Morrison effectively demonised Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax policies among suburban, homeowning families and retirees — albeit against a stronger anti-Coalition tide.
These outer suburbs are mostly home to middle-class, middle-aged families, including many migrants, who have purchased houses far from the CBD — the only place they can afford. Some vote Labor in line with their workplace and social interests, but many reflexively pull the property ladder up after themselves.
As University of Sydney Professor Anika Gauja recently said in The Conversation, there is a strong correlation between the average age of buying one’s first home (36) and the average age at which voters switch from being more likely to vote Labor or Greens to the Coalition (34 or 35).
Correlations do not necessarily equal causations, and people vote for myriad reasons. But it makes sense that homeownership can inculcate a degree of economic conservatism — your most valuable asset is now tethered to ratcheting wealth inequality. Labor’s abandonment of housing tax reform may have assuaged some of this cohort’s anxieties, but clearly not all.
A return to ‘big picture’ politics
Our major parties straddling demographic lines is preferable to America’s polarised system, with a widening gap between liberal, multicultural cities and reactionary, monocultural regions. Not only does that cause governmental dysfunction, but it also permits the right to plunge further into Fox News cuckoo land without answering to those outside its echo chamber.
For Labor, winning federal office is a rarity to be celebrated, but it too must contend with multidirectional headwinds, having underperformed in both the kitchen tables of exurban estates and in bohemian wine bars. Anthony Albanese can’t convincingly argue his moderation on climate and housing policies won him extra seats, and the former probably held the party back in some that were on offer.
Our major parties are unprecedently hamstrung, caught between young and old, renters and owners, aspirationals and battlers. The challenge for the Liberals is to heed the call of their haemorrhaging heartland amid the deranged calls to double down.
Meanwhile, Albanese must transcend Morrison’s cynical divisiveness, overcome his concerted timidity and return to common good universalism. There are simply too many cohorts in our complex electorate to cynically pander to one — for the others will soon take their revenge.
