Aspirational Left voters rise again in NSW State Election

Above is a snip of our ADS/Esri online map showing in shades of red the larger estimated Two Party Preferred swings to Labor in the March 25 NSW election at the close of counting on election night.
🔗 https://arcg.is/0rqGez

My preliminary analysis of the March 25 NSW State election vote and swings appears in today’s Australian Financial Review for subscribers only at
🔗 https://www.afr.com/politics/albanese-s-aspirational-left-piggybacks-nsw-labor-to-close-win-20230322-p5cugu

The analysis shows that the strongest swings to the ALP occurred in seats dominated by the better-paid Aspirational Left voters who also elected the Albanese Government and drove up private health insurance and private school enrolments during Covid lockdowns.
🔗 https://www.educationgeographics.net.au/new-face-of-politics/

Below is a chart from the preliminary analysis of the NSW results, showing the family income profiles of the seats you can see in the online map. Basically, the more high-income families in a state seat, shown to the right of the chart below, the bigger the 2PP swing to the ALP and the darker the red on the map, while more low to medium income families meant a smaller swing to Labor (below seven percent), or even a swing to Coalition, shown by darker shades of blue.

I should stress that only about half of the votes were counted on Saturday night, so the final results could vary to a sufficient degree to impact the results in a number of close seats.

I should also point out that that profile of both major parties in Australian politics are fading and, as they do, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ascribe even a theoretical 2PP vote to the major parties in a quarter of the seats.

Big components of the Aspirational Left include Professional Women and Asian Migrants. Professional women are now the fastest growing occupational group among Australian workers and Migrants now make up more than 50 percent of Australian Population increases since 2001.

These groups are therefore likely to increase in numbers and influence in Australia in the coming decade and exert a strong and growing influence over future state and federal elections and the uptake of private education and private health insurance.

At ADS/EGS and HGS we will be including this new group in all our future modelling.

2015 NSW State Election Profile

The current study takes a close look at the demographic characteristics of New South Wales voters who supported Labor or the Coalition in 2015, and who swung to Labor or to the Coalition between 2011 and 2015. We also take our first look at the Greens since 2010.

In this report we examine the demographic impact of similar state campaigns by the major parties in Queensland and NSW within the same short time frame and we make estimates of the difference a popular, as opposed to an unpopular leader can make to the results and to the demographics of the seats affected.

Invariably there will be mistakes made here and all we can do try to minimise them as best we can and confess our limitations. But it is worth trying, as this sort of inferential work breaks some new ground and doesn’t place the reader in a position where they are captive to the subjective assessments of vote counters or political players with a vested interest.

In 2015 a Queensland style negative campaign from NSW Labor about privatisation gained Labor votes and seats in the sorts of welfare dependent suburbs which swung to Labor federally in 2010. In 2015, this campaign won back traditional safe ALP seats dominated by these suburbs, but the lack of any credible plans for economic growth held NSW Labor candidates back in middle class seats won from Labor in 2011, some of which swung even further to the Coalition in 2015.

Read more..  2015 NSW State Election Profile.pdf