James Campbell: End of road for Liberals and conservatives’ boom time
The Liberal Party is in big trouble in Victoria — not just the sort of trouble that comes to all parties from time to time as the political cycles turn, but the deep existential kind, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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The Liberal Party is in big trouble in Victoria.
Not just the sort of trouble that comes to all parties from time to time as the political cycles turn, but the deep existential kind.
In politics, demography and geography are destiny and in Victoria both are running hard against the Liberals.
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After a good innings, the Baby Boomers are coming to the end of the cultural and political dominance they have had since the late 1960s.
As the last census revealed, there are now more Millennial voters than there are Boomers and gen Xers — with a big surge of even younger kids coming up behind.
How do they feel about the Liberals? Not too good.
According to the most recent breakdown of Newspoll, the Coalition presently enjoys the
support of 27 per cent of all voters under the age of 34.
That’s demography.
Geography is not too flash either.
There are 23 state seats and 12 federal seats in Melbourne on the northern and western side of the Yarra of which the Liberal Party holds zero.
And this situation is only going to get worse.
At a state level, Labor now holds the 15 most over-enrolled seats while the Coalition holds the majority of the most under-enrolled, making it highly likely the next redistribution will favour the ALP.
Likewise when Victoria gets another federal seat — as it will almost certainly do after the next federal election — the chances are it will favour Labor.
All this has been known and goes a long way to explaining why the Liberals have won only three state elections since 1979 and the two-party preferred vote at a federal election only twice since 1983.
After Saturday, however, these may not even be the party’s most pressing geographic problems.
It’s long been predicted that the Liberals might one day face a problem in their heartland seats of Higgins and Kooyong, but it was generally assumed that was a while off and the threat would come from the Greens.
Both assumptions turned out to be wrong.
A TALE OF TWO ELECTION PARTIES
ANIMAL JUSTICE PARTY TO STEAL UPPER HOUSE SEAT
On Saturday, the future arrived with massive swings against the Liberals not only in the state seats of Hawthorn, Malvern, Kew, and Prahran that make up the federal electorates of Kooyong and Higgins, but also in the much more conservative seats of Sandringham and Brighton, which are in Goldstein.
And they didn’t wander off to the Greens as had been expected — they jumped straight to Labor.
These people are rich. They’re successful. Society’s winners.
And as they did in Wentworth, they’re turning on the Liberal Party.
The idea that six months after they cold-bloodedly gave their vote to probably the most overtly left-wing premier Victoria has had, they’re going to turn around and vote for Peter Dutton, or Scott Morrison and his lump of coal, is fanciful.
Why Andrews could be preempting own political demise
By reiterating that the buck stops with him, is Premier Daniel Andrews giving himself a reason to go? That may be the case if the hotel quarantine inquiry ends up slamming the government, writes James Campbell.
Victoria’s maddening armchair ride under Dan
The Andrews’ government keeps making decisions everyday Victorians know are madness. Coronavirus positive patients allowed to exercise, guests leaving quarantine without testing. How long can this go on, asks James Campbell.