Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

PM's spin turns off childless

By John Black - posted Tuesday, 27 May 2008


One of Labor's best modern campaigners, Neville Wran, used to advise leaders to carefully select their campaign slogan, then just keep repeating it, no matter what.

He used to say that when you felt like you would throw up if you repeated it one more time, you would be just about getting through to the most apathetic of voters. Hence the repetition of the slogan working families by the Rudd team.

Australian Development Strategies' election modelling profile of the 2007 swing indicates that it seemed to have the desired result in some seats but did the exact opposite in others.

Advertisement

The profile initially looked pretty straightforward: most of the seats Kevin Rudd won was because median-income working families with young children, buying a home and driving a car to work from the outer suburbs, thought the Coalition didn't care enough about them.

There was also a resolution for change from the more activist religious groups that usually dominate the Christian school sector, and this delivered a disproportionate number of seats, especially in Queensland.

But there was movement back to the Coalition from an interesting group dominated by the rich, the well educated and the internationally qualified younger adults who tend to be clustered in the inner suburbs of capitals, and many of these voted Green first, Liberal second.

The reason for this counter-swing was a bit of a mystery to analysts at that time. We noticed an interesting trend in the results when we started to look more closely at the influence of age on the swing and the vote.

For the first time since we started profiling elections in 1966, we saw what seemed to be a divergence between parents and non-parents of the same age. Usually infants to four-year-old children have mothers in their 30s and this group is trying to re-enter the workforce, pay for a second car for another long commute, and juggle housing and childcare costs.

They are the classic swinging voters. Rudd offered them a much better deal for child care and they voted for it. Usually other 30-somethings without children would have followed suit. Get the first age group and you get the second group free.

Advertisement

However, this time the 30-something women with no children didn't follow the same pattern. Analysts decided to look beneath the surface of those who weren't working families with children, and enhanced their database to include women of various ages and their children.

For women with children, Rudd was the clear winner in terms of the swing to Labor. When the seats were ranked in terms of 30 to 34-year-old women with two children, analysts found they were looking at the outer urban-provincial seats won by the ALP, such as Lindsay, Flynn and Forde, or seats that should have been won by the ALP, including Greenway, Hughes and Dickson. The last three were retained narrowly on the personal votes of sitting Coalition MPs.

But when analysts looked at women without children, it was a different story.

The chart shows them swinging strongly to the Coalition.

The number of children didn't matter: if they had them, their votes swung towards Rudd. If they didn't, they swung towards Howard. For the first time since 1966, the second age group went in the opposite direction to the first.

There are two things of relevance when you look at the profile of women without children. The first is how many voters are you talking about, to get an estimate of the national swing, and the second is where do they live, so you can get an estimate of the seats at stake.

Someone should tell the spin doctors writing all those Labor speeches with the words working families before every full stop that there are about four million women aged 15 to 44 in Australia and half of them don't have children. For the crucial 25-34 group, the figure is almost the same.

These women, who could be gay or unable or unwilling to have children, clearly felt that the ALP's focus on working families meant Rudd was going to be handing their tax dollars over to those with children. And they voted accordingly. Not only are there a lot of them, but they're living in clusters across the capital cities: totally different seats to the group with children.

When you rank the seats by the proportion of 30 to 34-year-old women without children, the list is topped by seats such as Melbourne, Sydney, Wentworth, Grayndler and Batman.

Griffith, an inner Brisbane seat held by Rudd, rounds off the top 10 seats. This was the missing link from the group that had swung against Labor at the previous election. The mystery was explained.

Further analysis shows that this is the former left-wing ALP group that swung heavily to first the Greens and then the Liberals, nearly unseating Labor in Melbourne and certainly returning Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth in Sydney.

A continuation of this trend in 2010 could give the Greens enough primary votes to come ahead of the Liberals at the next election and could cost Rudd Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne), Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek (Sydney), Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese (Grayndler) and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson (Batman).

These seats look safe on the pendulum, but 6 per cent swings to the Greens from Labor wipes out some of Rudd's top ministers.

The problem for the Rudd Government is that it's not just his ministers who look like they're about to throw up if they say working families one more time; it's a growing number of voters - not just pensioners - who think perhaps it's time for the Government to drop the campaign slogans and focus on governing for all Australians.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All

First published in The Australian on May 22, 2008.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

10 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

John Black is a former Labor Party senator and chief executive of Australian Development Strategies.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by John Black

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 10 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy