Kos Samaras presented to left-wing think-tank Per Capita on Wednesday (speech available in full here). He is a former Labor Party official who now runs polling and political consultancy firm Redbridge.
Samaras is known for focusing on disaffected and non-party-aligned voters. Notably, he accurately called the deteriorating fortunes of the Voice campaign as it aligned itself with much-hated corporate icons like Coles and Qantas.
Where is Australian politics heading, according to Kos?
Following patterns worldwide, inner-city and higher-educated electorates have become strongholds of the left, while lower-educated outer-suburban and regional areas are the base of the right-wing. Labor currently only holds 15 regional and rural seats nationally, while the LNP only holds 15 metropolitan seats. Indeed, if the LNP is to lose any further seats in 2025, it would most likely be its two metropolitan seats in Melbourne.
“This trend from 2022 is going to continue,” said Samaras. The poorer and less culturally diverse electorates are “going conservative, and they’re going conservative in a very big way.”
Kos predicts Dutton will pick up the anti-establishment right-wing rhetoric that at the moment is such a force on social media and among minor parties on the right. An early sign of this is Dutton’s position that Albanese has been too soft on Coles and Woolworths during the cost-of-living crisis.
“That works really well among non-university educated young people in the outer suburbs.” The Coalition has “woken up to the fact that they’ve gone really hard on industrial relations,” Samaras argues, “and corporate Australia has given them nothing back.”
At present, the anti-establishment sentiment on the left is converted into seats held by Greens and Teals. Right-wing anti-establishment sentiment exists but has not been consolidated.
The major challenge for Dutton is generational, thus their need to shift to an anti-establishment rhetoric. When Abbott won in 2013, 54% of voters were Baby Boomers; now it is just 26%.
Nowadays, among 18-34 year-olds, just 24% support the LNP. Labor support among this group is at 28% and Greens’ support at 20%.
On top of that, over 80% of Indian-Australians vote Labor. Among Chinese-Australians, Scott Morrison’s rhetoric during the pandemic years set the LNP back among what could have become a base of support.
So while there is support for the LNP, its path to a Lower House majority remains narrow. Samaras gives a 70% chance of a Labor-led minority government in 2025.
It is quite possible that the LNP will win more seats than the ALP, but not be able to form government. And there is also an outside chance that “the dam breaks” (as the former Labor strategist put it) and the LNP pass 75 seats to form a direct majority.
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