Young voters slip away from Greens after year of cost-of-living clashes

Younger voters have shifted towards the two major parties and cut their support for the Greens over the past three months, intensifying a political race to gain their trust on issues such as housing and the cost of living.

Australians aged 18 to 34 have cut their primary vote for the Greens from 27 to 23 per cent during the final quarter of this year, driving their support below the level seen at the last election.

Young voters have moved away from the Greens in the last three months of the year.Credit: Monique Westermann

The shift has come with a boost in their core support for Labor, up from 31 to 33 per cent, and a similar increase for the Coalition, up from 25 to 27 per cent.

But older voters – a bigger share of the electorate – have continued a dramatic swing to the Liberals and Nationals this year and now record twice as much support for the Coalition as for Labor.

The exclusive findings, conducted for this masthead by Resolve Strategic, show that younger voters favour Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as the nation’s leader by a margin of 43 to 23 per cent over Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

Among voters aged over 55, however, Dutton leads by 49 to 32 per cent when voters are asked to name their preferred prime minister.

Those aged 35 to 54 favour Albanese over Dutton by just 36 to 33 per cent – much narrower than their strong support for the prime minister at the end of 2023.

The quarterly analysis of the Resolve Political Monitor is based on responses from 4831 voters from October to December, confirming a broad shift from Labor to the Coalition since the May 2022 election.

Resolve director Jim Reed said voters were starting to “peel away” from the Greens in the areas where they were used to gaining strong support.

“We’ve noted a drop in Greens vote nationally this year, but most concerning for them will be that the loss is hardest in their traditional bases of younger and inner-city voters,” he said.

“Any minor party needs their vote share to be concentrated in particular seats, because if it’s too spread out, it doesn’t convert into elected MPs.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt (centre) and colleagues Max Chandler-Mather (left) and David Shoebridge.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Resolve Political Monitor has shown over time that voters in inner-city areas generally display greater support for the Greens, giving them a primary vote of 14 per cent among this group one year ago. This increased to 18 per cent in the three months to the end of September.

That support sank to 13 per cent in the three months to December, below the 15 per cent recorded in the Resolve Political Monitor just before the federal election in May 2022.

Albanese has blamed the Greens for delaying action on housing in the months before the Senate approved the Help to Buy scheme to offer federal equity for first home buyers and the build-to-rent scheme for apartment developers.

But Greens leader Adam Bandt accused Labor of doing too little on housing when the Greens wanted national controls on rent and billions in additional spending on public housing.

The softening in support for the Greens follows the political divide on the conflict in the Middle East, including a clash in June when Albanese said the Greens were misleading voters by claiming the government was complicit in genocide because of civilian deaths in Gaza.

Bandt has outlined plans to win seats from Labor at the coming election, naming Moreton in Brisbane, Wills and Macnamara in Melbourne, and Richmond on the north coast of NSW as key targets. The Greens are also targeting the Liberal electorate of Sturt in South Australia.

Labor and Liberal strategists counter the talk from the Greens by saying the party often claims it is gaining ground but did not win any of its target seats in Victoria and NSW at the last election.

The recent weakness in the Greens primary vote highlights the challenge for the party in holding the three Queensland seats it won in 2022 – Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith.

The new analysis showed male and female voters have similar support for Labor, 29 per cent and 28 per cent respectively, and have cut that support from 33 per cent each at the last election.

However, it reveals a big divergence in their support for more conservative parties. Male voters have increased their support for the Coalition from 37 to 41 per cent since the election, compared with an increase of just 34 to 36 per cent among women.

Asked to name their preferred prime minister, men favoured Dutton by 40 to 37 per cent, while women favoured Albanese by 36 to 32 per cent.

The quarterly analysis collates figures from the Resolve Political Monitor each month rather than asking new questions, leading to a larger sample size that produces results with a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points for the national findings, such as the age and gender breakdowns. This is a smaller margin of error than monthly surveys.

In a sign of the strong swing against Labor among older voters, those aged 55 and over backed the government by 38 per cent in the final quarter of last year, while 40 per cent gave their primary vote to the Coalition.

In the final quarter of this year, only 25 per cent of the same cohort gave their primary vote to Labor, while 50 per cent backed the Coalition.

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