According to my straw poll, no Boomer vote should be taken for granted

In the run-up to the state election on March 25, political parties and pollsters will be crunching numbers on how different population and age groups might vote. Opinion pollsters tend to characterise Baby Boomers and other older Australians as congenitally resistant to change and progress.

Assumptions about how older Australians vote may be misguided.Credit: Joe Castro

Can they glean anything from the 2022 federal election change of government? I might be able to help them.

Sixty years ago, I was a member of the Opportunity Class at Artarmon Public School. The selective classes (OCs) were for “academically gifted year 5 and year 6 students with high potential”.

We were a bright lot: In 1963, one topped the NSW leaving certificate; others individual subjects, and one was dux of their selective high school. Nearly all of us undertook tertiary education. The girls in particular brimmed with degrees, several with doctorates. Our successful careers included science, law, theology, languages, health and education.

Our teacher, Mr (later Dr and Professor) Sam Ball inspired us then and for 60 years after with his later storied career in US and Australian education. We Artarmon alumni still refer to ourselves as Samballians and remain in touch.

I decided to ask my surviving Artarmon OC classmates how they voted in the 2022 and 2019 federal elections. So how have we travelled “psephologically”? The Baby Boomer voting profile, reported by opinion pollsters around the 2022 federal election, described us as more unchanging and conservative than younger generations. Boomer women were more anti-Coalition than men.

I asked the 24 others (in confidence) if and how they’d changed their vote since 2019, and why. Nine boys and eight girls (almost 60 per cent of those surviving, and nearly half of the original 36) told me.

Labor supporters cheer as Scott Morrison concedes defeat on May 21, 2022.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Five hadn’t strayed far from the school gate, living in what are now the teal federal seats of North Sydney, Mackellar and Warringah on Sydney’s north shore. Another is in nearby Bradfield, which saw a large swing away from the Liberals towards independents in 2022, and is now marginal.

Four voted in Gilmore, Dobell and Macquarie – ultra-marginal NSW seats all retained by Labor. Two were in Sydney’s inner-west plus another in a safe Labor seat. Two were in Nationals-held rural seats, and two had moved interstate.

Here’s how we voted compared to other NSW voters: There was significant vote-switching between 2019 and 2022, mainly away from the Coalition. A third of us switched, compared to only 10 per cent across the board.

Five of the 17 had voted for the Coalition at the 2019 election, but only two stuck with them in 2022; that is, only 12 per cent voted Coalition compared to the Coalition’s actual NSW vote of 37 per cent (Newspoll predicted 50 per cent for over 65s).

Of the three boys who switched from the Coalition, two went straight from Liberal to Labor and another went from Liberal to teal/independent. The girls switched too: three of the seven girls who’d voted Labor in 2019 voted teal/independent in 2022.

Labor attracted 54 per cent of our votes in 2022, way over the actual 33 per cent statewide correctly predicted by Newspoll.

The Greens retained their two 2019 supporters (one girl, one boy); similar to the statewide vote.

Four of the 17 (three girls/one boy) voted for the new teals/independents in 2022. At 23 per cent, this is nearly double the polling estimate of 12 per cent for over-65s. Three others resisted voting for a teal candidate – two of them sticking with the Liberals.

Our Liberal deserters cited strong anti-Morrison sentiments, notwithstanding one losing Coalition candidate being “reasonable, but collateral damage”. The girls who had switched from Labor to teal/independent did so enthusiastically, describing them as an exciting alternative, particularly given their focus on climate, integrity and women’s issues. One even campaigned for them. Another former Labor supporter voted “strategically” for the independent candidate, believing that Labor had no chance of winning the seat and that a strong independent vote “would scare the sitting Liberal.”

Glib platitudes might hold that voters become more conservative as they age, with Newspoll’s pre-election survey showing 50 per cent of them as Coalition supporters. A post-election Essential poll, however, suggested any movement among ageing voters was more likely to have been from Greens to Labor.

Samballians bucked both trends. More than half of us voted Labor in 2019 (for some “the habits of a lifetime”). But in 2022, more than 30 per cent of us changed votes, to the left or centre, with Liberal boys turning to Labor and Labor girls turning to teals and other independents.

A substantial movement and a message, if not a warning, to all the political parties coming up to the state election.

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