COALITION RECAPTURES YOUTH VOTE

Coalition support among young people is back above 2002 levels since the emergence of Tony Abbott as leader.  Support for Labor is plummeting, meanwhile the Greens are the biggest winners among young Australians.

The Australian newspaper reports that the latest Newspoll figures confirm a steady increase in primary support among young people not only to the Greens, but more worryingly so (for Labor) to the Coalition.

Newspoll chief executive Martin O'Shannessy examined data from the most recent March-quarter demographic analysis of voting intentions, comparing it with the same quarter for each year going back to 2002.

He notes that the Greens were a big winner in total primary vote growth over that period. "However, the rise of Tony Abbott as Liberal leader has restored the Coalition primary vote to past levels generally and within the youngest cohort of voters," he says.

Analysis of separate Newspoll figures taken about the same time as the so-called Tampa election in November 2001 shows that rather than losing the youth vote during the controversy, the Coalition picked up support.

The longer-term challenge for Labor appears to be that the growth in the Greens vote across all ages has been in part at the expense of the ALP.

Mr O'Shannessy says it is possible the swing from Labor to the Greens is temporary. "However, a look at the underlying demographics of Labor, Green and Coalition voters gives us reason to think a more permanent change may be happening," the Newspoll chief told The Weekend Australian.

Far left Labor votes cannibalised by the Greens can be recaptured, in a similar way that the Coalition won back three quarters of voters who had defected to One Nation (the other quarter, by and large, moved to the Greens).  However, the youth vote transfer from Labor to an Abbott-led Coalition is not, by any means, so easily won back.  Continual claims by Labor in Question Time, and by the partisan Press Gallery that Abbott is toxic, and that his leadership is under threat by a divided party, appear more and more baseless as Coalition popularity skyrockets across the voting spectrum, and the Greens fail again, now in NSW, to perform as well as once predicted.

The most toxic things for young Australians, it would seem, are the Rudd/Gillard Governments.  With the May Budget date looming, we call on the Gillard Government, and the Treasurer Wayne Swann, to rein in the reckless spending and the pork-barreling, and help put downward pressure on inflation and ever-increasing interest rates and the cost of living.

For the Cause...

Drew Scott, Esq. BCom LLB GradDip LP 
Federal President
www.YAF.com.au