NSW election: Liberals must go online to sway young votes

Liberal candidate for Balmain Freya Leach says the party needs to harness the power of social media to connect with young voters on economic issues.

Liberal candidate for Balmain Freya Leach says the party needs to harness the power of social media to connect with young voters on economic issues.

Defeated Liberal candidate for Sydney’s inner-west Balmain Freya Leach says the party needs to harness the power of social media to connect with young voters on economic issues, as it begins soul-searching after Dominic Perrottet’s NSW state election ­defeat.

The 20-year-old law student has criticised her party’s campaign strategy that ultimately failed to convince younger voters to give the Liberals another term in government by overlooking social media in favour of traditional advertising platforms.

Ms Leach said she could feel millennial and gen Z voters “abandoning” the party as the results trickled in on Saturday night, with the Liberals suffering major swings against them in seats dominated by young voters.

This includes Parramatta in Sydney’s west, where millennials made up almost half of voters, which Ms Leach ­believes led to Parramatta lord mayor Donna Davis gaining a 15 per cent swing against Liberal candidate Katie Mullens.

“Algorithms are opaque, but when half of our voters are millennials, they are something the Liberal Party needs to master,” she writes in The Australian. “Creating engagement, building online communities, and buying ads for specific audiences – especially targeting young people – must be pillars of our social media strategy.”

Ms Leach boosted her campaign for Balmain by launching her own TikTok, where she posted quirky videos breaking down the ­Liberals’ policies for a young audience.

Though she was unsuccessful in winning a seat the Coalition has never held, she clawed back 19 per cent of the vote in the two-party contest between the Greens’ Kobi Shetty and Labor’s Philippa Scott.

“Young people value authenticity and a sense of being ‘real’,” Ms Leach said.

“If we do not pivot to produce that content, the negative Liberal brand damage resulting from the ScoMo era will stick.”

Ms Leach said the Liberal Party’s message of good economic management was not reaching millennials through tra­ditional political advertising, with voters under 35 having no lived experience of recession.

“We need to be bridging genres by including references to popular culture and striking the balance between serious and entertaining content,” she said.

“And our ‘serious’ content needs to be emotive.

“Under 35s have never experienced a recession (so we should) show them what one would look like.

“Show them the impact that a recession would have on families and on mental health.”