For today’s post I am looking at how the Muslim vote changed, using some techniques I’ve previously used to look at voters of Chinese and Indian ancestry in past votes.
At this election we have seen a lot of speculation about Muslim voters switching from Labor, voting for Muslim independents, but also possibly for the Greens, with the war in Gaza being a major influence on that trend. We have seen Muslim groups cease to invite major party politicians to Islamic events that they would have previously attended regularly.
For this post I wanted to be more specific and look at how suburbs with large Muslim populations swung, relative to other parts of their seats and other parts of urban Australia.
Of course the best analysis would be individual survey data, which is coming, but for communities that are geographically concentrated, you can use booth data to get some sense of trends – you just need to be careful. The ecological fallacy can trip you up, but in areas where the Muslim population is very large, I think this can make sense.
To simplify this process, I have grouped election results by suburb, and matched that to the ABS 2021 census data for each suburb. I have also excluded smaller-population suburbs, and in the national charts I have only included metropolitan suburbs.
Let’s start with two-party-preferred votes, although there are a number of seats such as Watson where we don’t currently have 2PP data.
In some seats there isn’t much of a trend, but generally in most of these seats the most Muslim suburbs swung more strongly towards Labor. Blaxland and Calwell are notable. It’s also notable that Bruce, a seat where the Afghan community is prominent and was a major part of the campaign, doesn’t appear to have any trend.
But there was no suggestion that the Coalition was going to be winning Muslim votes off Labor: rather that independents and Greens might. So the Labor primary vote would be more interesting.
The swing against Labor was slightly worse in the more Islamic parts of Calwell, which makes sense considering Labor seems to have been hit from multiple angles, but the slope is much stronger in Watson and Blaxland.
Wills is a seat where most suburbs have less than 10% Muslim residents, but the two suburbs that are over that level had swings of over 10% from the Greens. The most Muslim suburb in Scullin also had the biggest swing in that seat.
The most interesting of these charts was Barton. Most of the suburbs have under 10% Muslim residents, and those suburbs had a mix of swings against Labor and swings to Labor, some quite big swings in their favour. But those more Muslim suburbs consistently showed small swings against Labor. A similar trend can also be detected in Chifley, but a bit less clearly.
I had been trying to work out where to include my booth map of the day for Barton, so let’s throw it in here.
Labor gained a noticeable primary vote swing in those parts of the electorate contained in Georges River council, particularly at the southern end around Kogarah. But in the centre of the seat, around Bexley and Arncliffe, there were double digit swings against Labor.
The Greens gained swings of 19% and 24% in two Arncliffe booths. That suburb had a 19.4% Muslim population in 2021.
While this swing appears to have largely been from Labor to the Greens, it can still be detected on the 2PP map. Labor gained huge swings in the southern end around Kogarah (which has quite a large Chinese population), but had somewhat muted 2PP swings in the centre of the seat.
Anyway so in addition to Labor primary swings, I have also charted the Greens primary swings in these most Muslim electorates.
There is no trend in Blaxland, Watson or Calwell, where prominent independents took the wind out of the Greens’ sails, but almost everywhere else their vote picked up the most in the more Muslim areas: Wills, Werriwa, Macarthur, Barton, Bruce and Chifley all show this trend.
I don’t think this is the full story of the Greens’ boost in suburban seats, but I do think it suggests it is most heavily concentrated in communities with a lot of Muslim voters. I hope we’ll be able to learn more about this over time.
Most Arab Australians are not muslim but may also have swung due to middle eastern geopolitics. it could be worth looking at.
Interetsing analysis it does suggest what i have felt in that the Gaza conflict will lead to a left ward swing among Muslims when compared to Libs on 2PP terms even if an independent made the 2CP such as Watson, Blaxland and Calwell.
@ Ben will it be possible to do one for the Jewish seats (i do accept less likely to be accurate due to many Jews not voting on the Sabbath)
In Bruce, the Liberal vote collapsed all over the seat due to a bad candidate including in Affluent Anglo Berwick which has very few Muslims.
It’s a much smaller demographic, so it’s just a few seats. I probably won’t get around to doing that one. This took a lot more time than I thought.
@Nimalan
The vast majority of Jews aren’t religious apart from aybe hiring a Kosher caterer at their daughter’s wedding.
Where I voted in Bonner the Muslim Votes HTV people were pushing a vote for Labor. When asked if they thought Albanese would do any more for the Gazans after the election than he was doing then [i.e., nothing], the response was that the Liberals wouldn’t do any better. Which is possibly true [we’ll never know], but on first principles it seeed to be more about shoring Labor up than anything else.
@ Gympie
I agree that there are many Secular Jews. However, one thing is that Religion is often about identity than faith/belief. So even a Jew who does not pray regularly and may hit the nightclub on Sabbath does often feel a cultural identity. For this reasons even Secular/less religious Jews would feel that they are seperate ethnic/cultural group to Anglo Australians. So a Jewish Surfer Boy who lives in Dover Heights and Surfs at Bondi will still feel that he is diferent culturally from his Anglo-Celtic mate at Uni who lives in Clontarf (NSW) and surfs at Manly Beach. Many Croats may not be stricly religions but being Catholic is part of their identity and distinguishes them from Serbs who are Eastern Orthodox or Bosnians who are Muslims. For Muslims even less religious Muslims generally are Pro-Palestine
Somewhat similar to the comments on the Spence thread, I feel like while many Muslim Australians might feel taken for granted by Labor, there’s a very hard stigma to overcome for them to vote Liberal or any other right wing party, even if on certain social issues they may have quite a bit in common – you can also go back to how the No vote for SSM in many working class ethnic Labor electorates didn’t end up being anything like a realignment – social issues don’t decide elections. The Gaza conflict reinforces that.
@ WL
A comment that you made on the Bellarine thread about Shared Social values do not decide elections was one the most astute ones i have seen on tallyroom. Link below. I think this was reinforced by the election on May 3rd where a strong No vote in White Working class electorates (Blair, Hunter, Paterson, Forde, Petrie) did not prevent Labor winning those seats. I do agree with you that many conservative commentators do foolishly believe that social issues may drive a realignment. I think many in the right flank of the Libs prior to October 7 believe Muslims could be converted to Liberal voters and belive that the voting Teal was only a stepping stone until Labor eventually wins Mackellar, Curtin etc. Peta Credlin said the Teal seats are in transition.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/vic2022/bellarine2022#comment-804146
Is there a such a religious based approach to voting – or more precisely is there is a Muslim voters see Gaza as the issue link? For example there is another similarly horrific slaughter going on in Sudan. It gets little to know media or social media attention, too dark an issue to discuss it seems. Yet if you, or family, are from Sudan or countries around it would your international issues vote be more determined by the potential for less lack of interest?
So far the only clear voting pattern from people from those regions is the vote against same sex marriage in that plebescite. Seems a strong link from cultural attitudes to homosexuality in that, a view point that will likely lessen with time.
@Nimalan pointing to what Jonathan said about a lot of Arab Australians being non-Muslim another example similar to the former Yugoslav examples (e.g Croats and Slovenes are Catholic, Serbs are Orthodox and Bosnians are Muslim) would be that Lebanese people tend to distinguish between Christian (mostly Maronite Catholic but a minority are Greek Orthodox) and Muslim (mostly Sunni but some Shia) Lebanese. A lot of Lebanese Aussies aren’t strictly religious (even though many still pray). Some aren’t even religious at all.
But being Catholic is a cultural thing. It distinguishes them from Arab Muslims. In Lebanon, Catholicism predates colonisation but was strengthened by French colonisation, which means French influences (even French names).
Personally I don’t think the conflict would’ve affected non-Muslim Arabs, whether they be Lebanese Catholics (the majority of non-Muslim Arabs would be descended from Lebanese Catholics) or Coptic Christians from Egypt.
@ NP
I agree Religion can have an effect on Cultural identity like you correctly pointed. Lebanese Christians can eat pork, drink alcohol, celebrate Christmas/Easter. They often have Western First names like Nick, Tony and George. This also means it makes it easier for them to intermarry for example if a Maronite Catholic marries a Roman Catholic Italian they dont really have as much issues on which religion their children will be raised in etc. In addition to Lebanese Catholics and Copts the other main Middle Eastern Christian group are the Assyrians/Chaldeans who are very prominent in SW Sydney (Werriwa/Fowler and McMahon) or Nothern Melbourne (Calwell). Also for Armenians their religion is part of their identity even if they are not strictly religionus and i think that will apply to Gladys Berejinlian and Gisele Kapterian.
@ Conor King
Re Palestine versus Sudan and other conflicts. Rightly or Wrongly the Israel-Palestine conflict does seem to lead people to have strong views on it and lead to a lot of people who are not impacted by it to cheer for one side. This is a criticism that many on the Right argue. For example, very few Muslims are actually interested in the Uyghurs and pretty much no Muslim countries speak about that issue the same with Kashmir. It is not really the case that people pick sides in the Kosovo dispute, or ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka unless people actually come from that part of the world. Part of the issue why Muslims care more about Palestine than Kashmir, Uyghurs etc is the presence of Holy sites.