Real trouble for Liberals unless they can reach younger voters
Liberal strategists are aware that to win a majority next week they need to win over a key group of voters – but that doesn’t appear to be happening, argues James Campbell.
Analysis
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It’s clear from this poll that win or lose next Saturday, the Liberal Party will soon be in real trouble if it can’t make itself more popular with people who can’t remember the 60s.
According to the combined demographic breakdown of the last two waves of RedBridge’s track of 20 marginals the Coalition is losing with every age group born after 1964.
Not only that, their unpopularity increases with every generation.
So while a whopping 47 per cent of elderly Baby Boomers – and their even older siblings – give the Coalition their first preferences, this plummets to 32 per cent of Gen-Xers.
This group – born between 1965 and 1980 – are now well into middle age and wherever they were back when Midnight Oil was hot, they ought, by rights, to have moved onto the conservative pile by now.
Instead on a two-party preferred basis Labor is winning them 55 per cent to 45 per cent.
And it just gets worse from there: Labor lead 60 per cent to 40 per cent with Millennials (1981 – 1996) and as for Gen-Z, well, Coalition fans might want to stop reading here.
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According to this poll among those born since 1997, the Coalition is currently scoring 21 per cent – behind the ALP’s 29 per cent and the Greens who on 36 per cent are doing better – much better – than either of the majors.
It goes without saying that humanity’s lot being what it is, there will be fewer Baby Boomers (and older) voting at this election than there were in 2022 and a lot fewer than there were in 2019, the election which, by no coincidence, is not only the last before the Costello baby bonus kids started voting, but also the las the Coalition won.
Liberal strategists knew ahead of this campaign that if they were to have any chance of winning a majority next week they needed to win over some of these younger voters – especially young men.
From this poll it looks like this isn’t happening.
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