2025 Australian federal election

That is why I am sick of the popular myth that Universities causes people to hold “left-wing”views. I can say most people joining socialist groups for example already holds socialist views before starting university. As I person who studied STEM, I always talk my friends about the latest innovation trends and zilch on politics.

This is known as the “correlation doesn’t equal causation theory”, where for example higher support for the Voice among the highly educated is only a correlation not a causation.

Also whilst i did not Study STEM at University i studied commerce/economics at Uni and have more Pro-Business/free market views my cultural or religious views did not change after i went University and those were shaped by ethnic upbringing and the family i was raised in.

When I catch up with my software engineering friends, we invariably end up talking about minimising taxes, the stock market, buying property, and starting a business. Hardly conversation topics you’d expect from a bunch of leftists!

Also, there are three places I’ve met Trump supporters – the internet (and they are all from the US), a church I attended briefly that was way too fundamentalist for my liking, and university.

@Nicholas As someone currently in university, the media viewpoint of “uni = left-wing” probably has to do with the fact that the minority (I.e. pro-Palestine protest) tend to be the loudest and thus get the most attention.

Yeah I was never left-leaning in Uni either. And I went to Newcastle Uni.

It is one of countless examples of the phenomenon where the loudest subsection of a group does not represent the group as a whole.

In the UK we saw that Reform actually appealed to many younger voters, especially younger men. Was this a factor of a real right-wing tide among some conservative young people (mostly young men)?

I think they’ve started to appeal to younger bases. Nigel Farage is well known in internet circles due to the Nigel Farage memes (there’s a website called Cameo that he is on and people can pay him to say virtually anything so he’s been pranked into saying happy birthday to “Hugh Janus” and has made several references to the Big Chungus meme). Pauline Hanson is an iconic figure in Australian society and she has her own cartoon series that I would say mostly younger viewers watch.

In Australia we haven’t yet seen such a trend but I’ll note that, for example, the Innes Lake North booth, located at Charles Sturt University in the Port Macquarie suburb of Lake Innes, had a 9.7% primary vote for One Nation, compared to 8.1% across Cowper. Though in saying that Lake Innes is also a residential suburb and there is a shopping village with a Coles next to the uni and it is a conservative city so I’d say a lot of it is from non-students.

Primary votes at Innes Lake North in 2022:
* Nationals: 36.5% (–8.5%)
* Independent: 28.7% (+28.7%)
* Labor: 12.2% (+1.0%)
* One Nation: 9.2% (+9.2%)
* Greens: 5.5% (–0.6%)
* Liberal Democrats: 5.3% (+5.3%)
* UAP: 2.5% (–0.2%)

TCP:
* Nationals: 50.9% (–4.5%)
* Independent: 49.1% (+49.1%)

@Nether Portal I would imagine that most young Reform voters (especially men) probably aren’t in uni.

Though based on those results, they absolutely could supersede the Tories and become the UK’s main right wing force. Tories were the 5th most popular party amongst 18-24 year old Britons (behind Labour, Reform, Lib Dems and Greens).

Very interesting announcement, but per Preselection Updates, lawyer Stephanie Hunt has been chose as the Liberal Party candidate for MELBOURNE. Interesting discovery, and a seat not even remotely winnable.

What I think is interesting with the Melbourne announcement is just how proactive the Victorian Liberals have been in preselecting candidates. For some of these frankly unwinnable safe seats like Melbourne or Calwell etc. you’d expect them to announce their candidates a few months out from the election, not almost a year out. They’ve also basically had a candidate for every target seat for several months now (Dunkley excepted).

In the recent French Election, 18-24 have moved away from major parties instead embracing mostly populist parties either the left-wing LFI or far-right Le Pen’s National Rally

@James, not trying to be rude, but what is “interesting” about that announcement?

@Scart I wonder why the Tories are behind Reform among young voters.

@GPPS the fact that they’re doing heaps of announcements in unwinnable Melbourne seats like Calwell and Melbourne so early put from the election. The only part of the seat of Melbourne where the Liberals frequently outpoll Labor and have previously done well in is Docklands.

The other such part of Melbourne is East Melbourne, which I think in 2022 had the highest Liberal primary in the electorate at 25% after it more than halved in Docklands to just 16%. Bandt had 48% of the primary vote in Docklands. Quite remarkable.

@GPPS – I meant ‘interesting’ as Melbourne is a seat the Liberals know they cannot win, yet they have chosen a candidate. There are other winnable seats like Lingiari and Paterson across Australia where the Liberals can certainly win (and I think will win), yet they have already chosen a candidate in Melbourne, a seat where the demographics are very hostile, and the Liberals will certainly never win anyway. Exactly what Nether Portal said.

Here’s the map of seats the Coalition has fielded candidates in: https://jmp.sh/1hblGk0m

Key:
* Blue: Liberal candidate preselected
* Light blue: held by the Liberal Party but no candidate preselected
* Green: Nationals candidate preselected
* Light green: held by the National Party but no candidate preselected
* Purple: Liberal and National candidates preseletced (Bendigo)

I’ll be making maps for Labor and the Greens too, plus a map for others.

So, interestingly it seems that the Liberal Party hasn’t really preselected in many key seats yet. But they have, however, preselected a lot in Victoria and Tasmania, and have made several in South Australia too, but Queensland is the state they’ve barely touched.

The Liberals have preselected candidates for all but two seats in Melbourne’s Eastern Suburbs (they still don’t have candidates for Dunkley, a key seat, and Hotham, a safe Labor seat). They’ve also got candidates for three of the five Tasmanian seats. Well-known moderate and popular MP Bridget Archer will be recontesting Bass, though Gavin Pearce will not be recontesting Braddon. The party has preselected Josh Garvin in Franklin and Susie Bower in Lyons, with no candidate announced yet in Braddon or Clark.

List of seats with Liberal candidates:

* NSW: Bennelong, Bradfield, Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Farrer, Gilmore, Lindsay, Mitchell, North Sydney, Parramatta, Wentworth, Werriwa
* Queensland: Dickson, McPherson, Ryan
* SA: Adelaide, Barker, Boothby, Makin
* Tasmania: Bass, Franklin, Lyons
* Victoria: Aston, Ballarat, Bendigo, Bruce, Calwell, Chisholm, Corangamite, Goldstein, Higgins, Holt, Indi, Isaacs, Kooyong, Macnamara, McEwen, Melbourne, Monash
* WA: Canning, Curtin, Durack, Forrest, Moore, O’Connor, Tangney

List of seats with Nationals candidates:

* NSW: Calare
* Victoria: Bendigo

Labor: https://jmp.sh/wInoRAOH

So I think I’m starting to see a pattern here. The Coalition are preselecting lots in Victoria, Labor is preselecting lots in Queensland. Why? Because the Coalition’s weakest state is Victoria (the ACT is a territory) and Labor’s weakest state is Queensland, plus if Labor is trying to remain a major party in Queensland, i.e not become a third party and have the Greens beat them in terms of seat totals).

For the Labor map, red is seats they’ve fielded candidates and light red is seats with sitting Labor members but no officially endorsed candidates yet.

Greens map: https://jmp.sh/cU5dXpJM