James Campbell: Are men turning away from the Labor Party?

As Labor folk walk around asking “what just happened”, we will have to wait until the dust has settled for the party to find an answer. But in the next few weeks it is likely we will hear a lot more about Labor’s problem with men, writes James Campbell.

In the next few weeks we are going to hear a lot more about Labor’s problem with men. Picture: Kym Smith

Two days after election day, Labor folk are still walking around in a daze asking themselves: “What just happened?”.

For a party that has convinced itself that “Data is King” it is deeply traumatic to find out that its polling was not only wrong, but more or less wrong everywhere. And not just in the final week when the undecideds were meant to be tuning in.

The complete failure to pick up the swing against it in Queensland has officials completely perplexed.

The “what” is a technical question for which an answer will not be found.

More difficult for Labor folk to answer is the “why”. To be sure the folly of the retiree tax will be found to have played its part, as will the negative-gearing policy. No doubt ‘they just didn’t like Bill’ will be added to the list.

What ‘they’ didn’t like about him is a lot more difficult to quantify.

In the next few weeks we are going to hear a lot more about Labor’s problem with men. Picture: Kym Smith

Labor’s climate change policy has been blamed for the swing against the party in the parts of Queensland where there are coal industry jobs but it doesn’t explain the swing in that state’s south-east, an area that went for Labor at its state election.

Nor does it explain the swing against Labor in parts of the western suburbs of Melbourne or Tasmania. No doubt we will have to wait until the dust has settled for the party’s findings on this to emerge, but I will make a prediction.

In the next few weeks we are going to hear a lot more about Labor’s problem with men, especially working class men.

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Throughout the weeks of pre-poll from both sides of politics and everywhere, the reports I heard were the same: men who were clearly engaged in manual labour were increasingly looking for the Liberal how-to-vote cards.

No doubt many of them will be self-employed or small business employers who have never exactly been fans of the Australian Labor Party.

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But many of them who voted for Scott Morrison will have voted for Daniel Andrews six months ago. And according to the people I spoke to, many were clearly workers not bosses. In recent times we have a heard a lot about the gender gap in Australian politics with women favouring Labor.

It would seem that we might be following America where more and more men — especially white men without tertiary education — overwhelmingly favour the Republicans.

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