Had a chat with John Stanley of 2GB/4BC this week, at the tail end of yet another hot and humid Queensland summer of cyclones, heatwaves and floods. I recall making the suggestion to John that if the Labor PM was planning on fighting another election over the impact of global warming, then it would be a good idea to call it at the tail end of next summer, especially in Queensland, where he needs to win seats. We’ll see early next year if the PM was listening.
My editor has okayed me posting the original story on spatial electoral strategy from the Australian Financial Review’s special New Year’s Edition and here it is.
It looks as though 2024 will be a rerun of 2023 in many respects, albeit with signs of cresting and then stabilising for population growth, prices and interest rates.
We are also likely to see some stabilisation in Labor’s political fortunes in Western Australia, following the mid-2023 retirement of the state’s popular premier Mark McGowan. Our modelling of the 2022 election voting showed that Mark McGowan government was worth a flat 6 per cent to that year’s federal Labor Party vote in WA.
When McGowan quit in June, this vote was up for grabs and recent polling by RedBridge indicates that McGowan’s replacement Roger Cook, is likely to comfortably retain power on March 8, 2025, and also hold up Labor’s federal vote to the same 55% percent level attained in 2022.
In Queensland, the long-running soap opera that was the once-popular premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has finally ended during an ad break, with the election of her deputy Steven Miles, as the new Labor premier.
I had the pleasure of meeting with John Stanley of 2GB/4BC for a captivating conversation about Australian and international demographics. We didn’t shy away from the pressing current events either, delving into the intersection of demographics and the ever-evolving world around us. I hope you find it informative.
The thrust of the AFR article is that both leaders of the two major parties seem to be talking to the converted demographics which already dominate their own power bases.
While PM Anthony Albanese appears to be focussed on fighting off challenges in his own seat from the affluent inner-city Green Left, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton appears to be focussed on holding off challenges to the National Party and the LNP from the populist right of One Nation and Palmer United. Hence the ALP is losing support in the outer suburbs over cost of living issues and the Coalition is not winning back the support it lost at the last election from higher SES professionals, particularly professional women.
Election campaigns across Australia’s single-member constituencies are about winning a majority of votes in a majority of seats. This requires a combined demographic and spatial strategy.
I worked on this strategy for the ALP leading up the 1983 election for then Opposition Leader Bill Hayden, after I wrote to him, pointing out that his 1980 campaign had won him won plenty of votes, but not in the seats that could have been won. Bill was kind enough to let me publish these research papers which you can now find at https://www.elaborate.net.au/category/election-profiles/
Let me illustrate the importance of a combined demographic and spatial strategy with the Table above, which didn’t appear in the AFR story. The table shows 20 seats which changed hands in 2022, by their new MP and Party, their 2PP votes and swing, their SES and Income quartiles.
(Please note I am using here the official Australian Electoral Commission post-election allocation of preferences between the major parties and use the headings AEC: 2PP ALP, AEC: 2PP Lib/Nat and AEC: ALP 2PP Swing. This 2PP count works by assuming the ALP and the Coalition candidates polled enough primary votes to remain in the count, as 2022 preferences were distributed. Hence the ALP is shown as ‘winning’ the 2PP in Fowler, whereas the seat was in fact lost by the ALP to popular Independent Dai Le. Similarly, the table shows the Coalition ‘winning’ the 2PP vote in all formerly safe Liberal seats which were actually won by the Teals.)
The table shows that:
The only low SES seat that changed hands in 2022 was Fowler, lost by the ALP to an Independent. The only other ALP loss was the high SES seat of Griffith, lost to a Green.
The ALP tended to win Liberal seats in the medium SES range and these were mainly in WA where the swing was State based.
The ALP, Greens and Teals tended to win the seats in the higher SES ranges.
If it continues its failed 2022 strategy of targeting lower SES seats, the Coalition stands no chance in 2025 of regaining middle class and professional seats which it lost in 2022. Furthermore, these former safe Lib seats lost to Teals are evolving into marginal ALP seats.
For the ALP, the primary vote challenge remains the atrophying of its support among working families chasing well paid blue collar jobs. The West Australian Government did the heavy lifting for Labor in 2022 with this demographic and showed Federal Labor how it could be done in the other states.
The demographic target for both parties in 2025 can be found among younger, aspirational families, making a go of life and its challenges in the middle to outer suburbs. Increasingly, as Australia’s birth rate falls, this demographic is becoming dominated by Asian born parents who are currently voting Left, but consuming Right. They are supporting Labor electorally, but choosing private health insurance and non-government schools for their families.
This is a politically transactional demographic interested in opportunities and outcomes.
To have a chance at winning a narrow majority of seats in 2025, the major parties need the support of this demographic.
To win a working majority of seats, the major parties also need to regain some of their lost demographics – working families for Labor and professional women for the Coalition.
Leaders need to focus not just on voters they think they can win, but on voters who are also living in the seats that can be won.
Are you a student who is studying Geography, GIS, or Spatial Statistics or a mature-aged person seeking to re-enter the workforce? We are looking to train a small team of men and women to use Esri Mapping Software which not only assists us with our mapping business but equips you for your future professional career.
Education Geographics’ Spatial Strategist and Senior Mapper Dr Jeanine McMullan has trained numerous young men and women who have used their mapping skills to secure well-paid careers as Management Consultants for top Four consulting firms, Geography Teachers at High Schools, Town Planners or Professional, full-time Mapping Specialists.
In the second half of the year, casual positions may become available for work on spatial strategy maps, with a focus on transport logistics.
If you are a mature-aged person with a similar background or have experience with Esri software and are seeking to re-enter the workforce on a part-time basis, we would love to hear from you.
To take advantage of this opportunity send us an email providing details and a profile about yourself to admin@elaborate.net.au.
I had an opinion piece in the Financial Review today on the demographics driving the Voice Yes and No votes. The online edition has a lot of the charts which you might find interesting.
Our chief Mapper and head of Health Geographics Dr Jeanine McMullan also did a wonderful series of maps which highlight the demographic divides between the Yes and No voters and they are well worth a look.
Jeanine has designed the map in conjunction with the work from our great team of forensic statisticians, so that it highlights the Yes and No votes and puts in two layers for each of the main demographic drivers for both Yes and No. There’s also a slider at the top right of the map, so you can see the clear relationship between what happened and what drove it. The Yes vote was based on the very well educated and those in professional jobs, while the No vote was driven by the big group of male Tradies and workers with a Certificate Level of Education. There’s a message in there for a Labor Government which they cannot afford to ignore.
It’s a great map, so open it and zoom around the country to see what happened, where it happened and why it happened. And don’t forget to click on the pop ups to see all the details you need to know about each seat, including their Voice votes, their MPs and their demographics.
You couldn’t get a nicer picture on a chocolate box, folks. Here’s the adjoining villa at Tongariro Lodge this morning as we were starting to gear up for the day’s fishing. The mighty Tongariro River is about 20 metres away. Fly fishing awaits, for the first time here in 4 years, thanks to Covid lockdowns.
Great omen on the metal dividing fence at Auckland Airport. For the uninitiated, the Royal Wolf is a world famous dry fly for fly-fishing tragic, like your humble writer.
Phones off folks. We’re in the air, heading to Taupo for a week’s fly fishing on the famous Tongariro run. And Air New Zealand have been fantastic. Such a contrast to the nightmare of travelling with our former national carrier in recent years. We were travelling economy and the staff kept offering to help, the flights were all on time and even the customs helped out as we had a younger family. Loved it.
I can tell New Zealand Customs that, in all honesty, I definitely packed this bag myself. Not quite a triumph of three dimensional spatial optimisation.
