The Australian electorate is fundamentally changing.
In more than two decades of social research I have seen economic ups and downs, trends come and go, and public opinion about leaders and issues rise and fall.
But overall I’ve always believed the character of our country remained mostly unchanged: that we believe in fairness and equality more than freedom; that we have a trusting obedience and respect for our institutions of democracy and government (albeit little regard for most of the political class).
Now I am seeing a shift that has caused me to rethink the way I view Australia; a change in attitude that has profound and far-reaching implications for how Australians think about what politicians are offering.
There are three main points that politicians of all persuasions now have to confront when they think about voters and how to reach them.
The first is that our belief in a “fair go” is waning.
The second is that levels of engagement – how connected a citizen feels to their community and how active they are in public life – is becoming a better lens through which to analyse political attitudes and behaviour than almost anything else. Better than professed ideology, income or geography, all the measures by which we have traditionally analysed sentiment.
And third, if we view the Australian electorate through this lens, what emerges is a clear story about how gender and generation are shaping the trajectory of our politics.
Fairness and equality
The fair go has been so inextricably linked to Australians’ value systems that it has become part of our vernacular. It’s what we believe about ourselves and what we’re told by our leaders is our greatest national character trait.
A sign that our belief in it is crumbling showed up in research I conducted early last year. When 2,500 Australians were asked to list the values most important to them, “feeling safe and secure” was top of the list, an unsurprising result given global conflict, a cost-of-living crisis and extreme weather events threatening people and property.
The second was a surprise: personal freedom. Followed by the third, caring for others.
“Fairness and equality” ranked fourth overall. The only audience segment who considered it a top-three priority were more progressive, socially engaged Australians.
I checked this against the Scanlon social cohesion report, which remains the gold standard in research on social values. Had its tracking found something similar? The report authors wrote:
Traditionally, Australians have felt a strong sense of national pride and belief in the degree of fairness, opportunity and the ‘fair go’ on offer. Between 2007 and 2013, more than 80 per cent of people on the survey agreed that ‘Australia is a land of economic opportunity where in the long run, hard work brings a better life’.
Belief in the fair go, however, appears to be declining. We estimate that overall agreement that Australia is a land of economic opportunity has declined by 16 percentage points since 2013. In 2023, 63 per cent agreed that Australia is a land of economic opportunity, still a majority of people, but a substantial decline.
Of course, the practical application of the fair go was only ever partial, with blind spots for certain groups, most notably First Nations people.
But what I’m finding – and what the Scanlon research supports – is a slow but sure deflation of the belief that equality and fairness are ideals to aspire to.
Our notion of the fair go is intertwined with the great Australian dream of home ownership. If the dream is out of reach for so many, the fairness ideal becomes a mockery. This is especially true for younger people.
A survey I conducted last year on attitudes to property ownership contained unsurprising findings about the high level of dissatisfaction among young Australians – those aged between 18 and 29 – about their housing arrangements; only 51% were satisfied. The same research found that 60% of us believe the best way to build personal wealth is through property ownership. And the same percentage believe the dream of home ownership is pretty much dead for younger Australians. Let that sink in.
Is it any wonder that young people express low levels of confidence in our political institutions? They look around and conclude that our institutions are not there to solve their problems. This sense of despair about housing security infiltrates much of what we believed about Australian egalitarianism. As in many other advanced economies, the lack of secure and affordable housing is accentuating and perpetuating inequality. And among young people especially in my focus groups, there is a kind of fatalism about the situation. They feel that governments are incapable of or unwilling to unwind policies that have created a situation in which even well-educated, hard-working citizens struggle to cover rent or enter the housing market without parental capital.
As I read and re-read these words, they seem like an obituary for our affinity for fairness. But politicians and other people with an interest in cultivating a fair and decent society have it in their power to address the main cause of its decline: by changing the way we do housing.
That means tax reform, better laws for renters, more quality medium-density housing and better investment in affordable housing and public housing.
The 2025 federal election will be the first in which baby boomer voters, who have benefited the most from our twisted housing market, will be outnumbered by younger generations. This could provide an opportunity to break the decades-long bipartisan support of a housing system that amplifies every faultline of inequality.
Along with policy change should come a shift in the way politicians talk about their values – a different kind of approach to how we understand what shapes our beliefs and behaviour.
It requires those who lament the waning influence of fairness in public life to think how they can claim the ascendant values of “safety and security” and “freedom”.
Populist right leaders have laid claim to these values at the same time as they have dismantled laws and government funding that actually keep people safe and free to live their lives without anxieties about accessing healthcare and other essential services. When these leaders invoke language about fairness and equality it’s to stoke the resentment of those who feel things have “gone too far”. Sentiments such as: young men are being discriminated against in the workplace; white lives matter too.
If progressive politicians want to win support, they need to torpedo the hypocrisy of these arguments. They also need to communicate what “safety and security” and “freedom” look like in a decent society, one without the extremes of economic and social disadvantage that are becoming the hallmarks of so many advanced democracies.
To salvage what they can, progressives must change their words, their tactics and the lenses through which they view politics.
Taking part, paying attention
Traditionally voters have been divided into left and right, conservative or progressive, and politicians have pitched their promises accordingly. That’s changed.
My research – based on audience segmentation work from more than 10,000 people – backs this up. Terms such as “progressive” and “conservative” are becoming harder to define and potentially less useful to social researchers interested in more than just election outcomes.
Engagement includes everything from conventional political activity such as attending a rally, signing a petition or meeting an MP, to social behaviours including volunteering. It encompasses consumer behaviour such as buying a product based on its social impact, and seeking out or even paying attention to the news.
There was a time when Australians of all backgrounds were likely to join societies, organisations or institutions of all kinds, including Rotary clubs, unions, political parties, church groups and sporting clubs. Whether directly or obliquely, the leaders and other members of these groups spoke to us about politics and our engagement in these groups informed our political behaviour.
Labor relied on trade unions and Catholic groups to reach voters, Liberal politicians were involved in business and industry associations and the Nationals were connected through farming organisations and communities. In decades past, women were considered hard to reach and disengaged voters who would be led by the preferences of their fathers and husbands.
But Australians are no longer joiners. And more than ever it’s possible to hide from information about what’s happening in politics.
This doesn’t just pose a challenge for politicians looking to explain their policies. Our increasing disconnection from face-to-face engagement, combined with our capacity to avoid engaging with news about politics, has a direct impact on our democracy’s resilience.
The work of Prof Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, has shown that “civil engagement” and trust in democratic institutions are intimately connected.
In an interview with the New York Times last year, Putnam argued that political polarisation increases when people no longer feel connected to their community. He says social connectedness was “low in the beginning of the 20th century, high in the ’60s and then plunging to where we are now”. Levels of inequality are intimately connected – in the mid-1960s, he says, “America was more equal economically than socialist Sweden!” He concludes: “We’re not going to fix polarization, inequality, social isolation until, first of all, we start feeling we have an obligation to care for other people.”
Based on the past five years of my work, I now look at the electorate as three primary groups, based on their level of engagement: the engaged optimists, the ambivalent seekers and the disconnected.
Engaged optimists
Women, primarily older and regional.
They care for others, are concerned about equality and fairness, and want politics to be more accountable and transparent.
They run community campaigns, protest about the climate emergency, keep sporting clubs alive, and volunteer at work and in their communities.
They are open to learning and growing.
They are likely to get their news from the ABC, SBS, Nine newspapers/online and Facebook, and less likely to get their news from commercial TV.
They make up the core of the primary vote for Labor and the Greens, are responsible for the rise of community independent candidates, including the teals, and are unlikely to find Peter Dutton’s conservatism appealing.
Ambivalent seekers
Young men and women, particularly in metropolitan areas where there are jobs but little affordable housing.
Their top three concerns are housing, climate change and mental health.
Though frustrated with political institutions and processes, they are still enthusiastic about civil engagement.
Under-30s get their news almost exclusively from online sources and social media.
Both major parties are attempting to reach this group through podcast appearances, but without major policies to address their concerns they will consider themselves swinging voters or gravitate to parties at the far ends of the political spectrum.
The disconnected
Men of all ages in metro and regional areas.
They value loyalty, freedom and economic security above caring for others, are sceptical about experts and express less optimism for the future.
The pandemic has turbocharged their views, making them more irritated about regulation, more sceptical about reform and more likely to talk about “freedom” rather than “fairness”. They want less recognition of First Nations culture and less talk about gender equality and trans rights.
They are less engaged with all forms of media except commercial television.
Most are conservative, with 59% voting for the Coalition or One Nation. Dutton appears to them to be a practical, straight-talking strongman prepared to get rid of perceived virtue signalling in public life.
A political nihilism
I’m not sure whether prevailing trends in how we consume media are the byproduct or the main driver of polarisation. What I am sure of is that what media you consume shapes your political attitudes and behaviour in profound ways. One of the first questions I ask about research on any issue is: where are people getting their information about it? And maybe even more importantly, are they getting any information at all? Research from the University of Canberra shows seven out of 10 of us are avoiding news media and nine out of 10 of us report feeling news fatigue.
The role of social media as a driver of pessimism and disengagement may well be as damaging to our democracy as the craven behaviour of those who own and control the platforms.
Social media can of course be an effective channel through which to raise important issues, raise funds for causes and build a community around policy and advocacy.
But if we look at those people who get their news only from social media, it’s a sobering profile. At this stage it’s still a small minority – about 5% – but it gives us some hint of the near future. This group are less involved in their community and more ambivalent about social issues. They are not so much conservative or reactionary, more “meh”. About a third either didn’t vote or couldn’t remember who they last voted for.
While it has long been recognised that social media can be an echo chamber for ideologies, more attention should be paid to it as a place where many people are trying to avoid any political information.
In his confronting book on disinformation, The Lie Detectives, the US journalist Sasha Issenberg quotes one of the many political campaigners grappling with its impact:
The thing Trump and Brexit have taught me is worry about engagement first, persuasion later. A terrible problem on the left today is we’re worried about messaging before we even worry about whether or not people are going to hear the message.
I used to think that Australia was protected from the worst of the global political trends. We were a safe, stable, wealthy country. Some but not chronic economic inequality. Lucky. And we had an almost patriotic attachment to Medicare and compulsory voting.
That was hubris. We can and are being swept up in the same forces that are leading countries like the US towards a kind of political nihilism. Nothing matters and so anything is possible.
Now for the good news …
Whatever solutions exist for this decline in Australians’ sense of community, and in our sense of optimism, rely on two major factors. First, governments must address economic inequality. Second, and perhaps even more fundamentally, politicians have to address our sense of connection to each other.
And herein lies the good news. If there is – as so much research has shown – a significant relationship between participation in social activities and higher satisfaction and trust in democracy, anything governments can do to facilitate connection can help.
You don’t have to join a political group or to be a volunteer firefighter to feel connected to others. A book club, a running club, an animal rescue group or an organised kick of the football one weeknight all count.
Despite the pessimism bordering on fatalism I see in focus groups and survey data, we are still managing to keep our sense of belonging, at least to our immediate communities. Scanlon finds that “neighbourhood belonging and cohesion generally increased during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and remain high in 2023”. As does our belief in democracy as a better alternative to political systems with strong leaders and no parliament or elections.
We don’t want autocracy, just a more receptive democracy.
Where does this data come from?
The insights in this essay have been formed based on three audience
segmentation projects I have conducted over the past five years — Climate Compass, Gender Compass and Community Compass. The data from these three projects has been collated and undergone a meta-analysis to form an ‘OmniCompass’.
What is audience segmentation?
Audience segmentation is a methodology where a large-scale survey of over 2,000 respondents is analysed in a way that breaks those respondents into segments based, in most cases, on their attitudes to a particular issue.
Why do audience segmentation research?
Audience segmentations capture the complexity of what different people care about and believe in which is crucial for building issue salience and creating the right targeted messages.
Through a segmentation we get a deeper insight into ‘mindsets’, into the complex and often contradictory views we have about the world. For example, a straight-forward survey might say 83% of people believe that climate change is an important issue. That’s interesting but not particularly useful.
A segmentation will show only two, very engaged segments of the population, are prepared to think about climate change when they vote in a federal election or purchase a new car. It will tell us what values those segments have, what media they consume, what other issues matter to them and what drives or hinders further action on climate.
What were the three audience segmentation projects these insights are based on?
The OmniCompass is a meta-analysis of three audience segmentation projects exploring community attitudes and behaviours relating to climate change (Climate Compass, 2022), gender equality (Gender Compass, 2023) and the community sector (Community Compass, 2024).
All three projects had a similar framework and asked similar questions about values, political behaviour and behaviour change.
So what is the ‘OmniCompass’?
We collated these three projects into one massive nationally representative data set of over 9,000 respondents which were ‘segmented’ based on levels of engagement to provide a useful lens through which to see Australia’s changing politics. By bringing together these three projects, OmniCompass adds depth to our understanding of the barriers and potential pathways to greater social and political engagement across different sections of the community.
