THE (almost) LAST POST ON LABOR FROM 2019 ELECTION

Hi there political tragics. The 2019 election has been fought and finalised and we’re just about finished our preview of the poll and our demographic wrap up.

Based on the research we have read and done ourselves, Labor lost an election it didn’t need to lose, after a campaign in which it offered higher taxes and spending, via an unpopular Leader Bill Shorten.

Labor’s campaign fell flat in working class seats across the outer suburbs and provincial cities across the country. The promises of higher spending failed to resonate with those voters it sought to attract: swinging voters and working families.

The Liberal campaign was led by a boofy suburban Church-going bloke nicknamed ScoMo, who has consistently under-promised and over-delivered in his previous portfolios.

He promised minimal additional spending and tax cuts for business and middle-income earners. This campaign worked a treat with working class and middle-class families, along with Grey voters and active Christians, but the Coalition’s lack of a credible policy on Global Warming cost the Coalition dearly among wealthier, better educated voters inside the Goat Cheese Circle.

With both major party groupings finishing up on between 49 and 51 percent of the vote, either side could have won the 2019 election.

The Coalition won because its rise in support was spread across big numbers of marginal suburban and provincial city seats, whereas the ALP campaign only worked in a smaller number of safe seats in the Goat Cheese Circle and our bigger University suburbs and towns.

That’s all she wrote really.

Here’s a few links for those of you who want more details.

First, here’s a fantastic Esri map done by our Senior Mapper Dr Jeanine McMullan. It’s online and completely interactive. Open it up at this link and click on the little  button in the top right corner of the page, to get some tips on how to use it. You’re welcome to share it around.

The link is https://egs-au.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=1a84d2f75fe04666a7501c5cd7921c0f

There’s other links on our web page, including all my original profiling work on Australian historical election records, going back to 1966. https://www.elaborate.net.au/category/election-profiles/

There’s a few blogs already posted under Recent News on the same page.

The one from May 16 on Stereotypes and Voting, previews the election, at https://www.elaborate.net.au/stereotypes-and-voting/

The Religious Rudd and the Grey Voters posted on election day took a look at how these groups looked like moving later that night and turned out be reasonably useful.
https://www.elaborate.net.au/the-religious-rudd-and-the-grey-voters/

After the election there is a May 20 post on the long-term decline in Labor’s vote among working families and its rise among professionals, entitled Shifting Demographic Tectonics. https://www.elaborate.net.au/shifting-demographic-tectonics/

Finally, there’s a story on the decline of the Labor vote among male miners in what used to be its provincial electoral fortresses, see Labor Digs a Hole with Miners. https://www.elaborate.net.au/labour-digs-a-hole-with-miners/

LABOR DIGS A HOLE WITH MINERS

Hello again, political tragics. As we proceed with our 2019 profiling, the longer-term damage Labor has done to itself with working class men just keeps getting uglier.

The chart here tracks the declining profile of miners for the ALP since we first profiled national elections back in 1966.

In 1966 the Labor Party and Labour Movement were the same group in strong mining seats, such as Hunter, held by Labor MPs since 1910.

After male Tradies, male miners were the second most significant driver of the Labor 2PP vote in 1966. The strong mining seat of Hunter recorded a 1966 2PP vote for Labor of 74.4 percent, which was ten percent above the vote predicted by our 1966 model.

So Labor was not only winning the votes from miners, but winning extra votes from mining families, turning mining towns and cities like Newcastle and Broken Hill into Labor fortresses. If you worked in the mines, you were in the union and if you were in the union, you voted Labor and so did your family and your neighbours.

From 1966, the vote for Labor in mining seats began a long-term decline, with the profile for miners falling into negative territory in 1998. By 2019 male miners were as big a negative driver for Labor as they had been a positive driver in 1966. In other words, you were more likely to find miners in Coalition seats than Labor seats and the stats were significant to more than 99.9 percent confidence levels.

In 2019, the three seats with the largest 10 percent plus swings to the Coalition were Dawson, Capricornia and the above seat of Hunter, three of the top eight seats for male miners as a share of the male workforce.

The first two of these mining seats – Dawson and Capricornia – are now held by the Queensland LNP, with Hunter, the former rock-solid Labor seat now reduced to marginal status on 52.5 percent 2PP for Labor.

In fact, of the top eight seats for male miners, all but Hunter now elect non-Labor MPs.

To add insult to injury, when we were modelling the swings to the Coalition across these three mining seats, not only did they record ten percent plus swings to the Coalition, but these swings averaged five percent greater in each seat than the national swing model was predicting.

So miners are voting for the Coalition, so are their families and their neighbours. The model from 1966 has been turned completely on its head.

The mining fortress for Labor among working class men in the mines has fallen. Rebuilding it seems a task too far for the Labor party by 2022, if it remains fixated on fighting back the Green challenge to its MPs in its inner urban Green Left seats. The miners don’t want to pay for them anymore.

To quote Labor’s great Finance Minister from the Hawke Government WA Senator Peter Walsh: if you base your policy on the demands of a minor party, you are destined to become one.