I’m even less inclined to buy the Howard hagiography according to News Limited now that I’ve had a chance to read a substantial excerpt: Caroline Ovington’s ‘Howard’s South Park Pals’. No doubt something sensible could be written about changes in the attitudes of young people, but this ain’t it. It’s hardly even worth bothering with the article after the first few paragraphs:
By 2004, however, when Howard won his fourth election, the ground had shifted dramatically. Less than a third of young people — 32 per cent — voted for Mark Latham, while 41 per cent went with Howard.
Even allowing for the 17 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted for the Greens, the uncomfortable truth for the Opposition was that, for the first time since reliable age-specific polling began, less than half of young people were voting for candidates from the Left.
There may well be a story there about the Libs outpolling Labor in the youth vote, but there isn’t one about “Howard’s young fogies”. Add 32% of Labor votes to 17% of Green votes and you get 49% of votes cast for “THE LEFT” compared to 41% for the Coalition (leaving aside the doubtful practice of reading social attitudes off partisan votes, or whether a Labor or Green vote translates to an identification with THE LEFT and vice versa for a Liberal vote, but hey, it’s Ovington’s “argument”, not mine). If Ovington can’t notice a basic contradiction in figures she herself cites, you wonder how sloppy and slanted the rest of the tome will be.
Update: Ovington’s junk findings conflict with Andrew Leigh’s social scientific research.
Trackback.
From amongst the people I know voted for Howard in my age group (youth vote for previous two elections) they cited his “economic security” versus Latham being an “economic unknown” as the main reason they voted liberal. In other words, economic competence was not everything but it served as a barometer that guided the politically uneducated.
Also, many conservative friends with a social conscience voted Democrat rather than Howard. They are not exactly left leaning but they are not neoliberal fuckwits either.
Also, asking Nelson how young people are going and then saying: “Young people, in particular, have never had it so good.” Implies that young people are not getting a raw deal. WTF!!!!!!!! What are the unemployment figures for young adults?
“[John howard] has encouraged the young to rebel.”
::blink::
who is this person who wrote this terrible document? they should be sacked.
“There may well be a story there about the Libs outpolling Labor in the youth vote, but there isn’t one about “Howard’s young fogies”. Add 32% of Labor votes to 17% of Green votes and you get 49% of votes cast for “THE LEFT” compared to 41% for the Coalition”
I thought the same thing when I read that in the paper. And besides I don’t think they can be called “young fogies” they are different to the young right wingers of the previous generation Reagan/Thatcher etc (ie me). These people are not fogies at all, just young people who want to pay as little tax as possible and earn as much as possible to spend the money in an unfogie like way.
I noticed the same thing when I read the article this morning, Mark. I think the only good point Overington makes is that Peter Garrett is not a young person.
Yes, Rob, despite his hairstyle and clothes
I knew I’d seen this before.
Andrew Norton had this to say, under the title, “Annals of Dubious Research”):
Hmm…
Yep, I had a vague recollection of that too, Rob. Also I remember reading somewhere that Caroline Ovington is particularly sloppy on “social affairs” reporting, but perhaps she has a lot of rivals for that prize.
“Yes, Rob, despite his hairstyle and clothes”
He seems to be going for the old professor look at the moment, certainly no sorry t-shirts anymore
Yeah, but shockingly he doesn’t always wear a tie, Anna! Hang on, young funky professionals wear ties. Oh dear, it’s all so confusing telling gen y and babyboomers apart from their clothes. Do we need to have recourse to Bob Carr’s famous line “you can tell the gang members because they wear back to front baseball caps”?
I know I’m a bit dense on these matters, but I don’t quite see what you’re complaining about, Mark. Ovington said less than half young people voted for the left. So they did - 49 per cent, as you point out. I must say the figure surprises me. I’d also have expected Latham to be more popular with the young than these figures indicate.
Maybe someone here can confirm my suspicion or dismiss it
Perhaps the youth that grew up under Hawke/Keating are still Labor and those that grew up under Howard will be Liberal
Is there any truth in that off the cuff assessment?
Rob, first she says “less than a third” voted for Labor, then “less than a half” voted for THE LEFT. If Howard got a primary vote of 49% (THE RIGHT), we’d never hear the end of it! Presumably the other 9% voted for someone other than “Howard” or “THE LEFT”, but you wouldn’t have a clue who from Ovington’s article. It’s horrendously sloppy, and I’ve got no particular confidence that the Australian Democrats “youth survey” and an advertising agency’s research give us any deep insight into attitudes of young people, which as I pointed out, you can’t read off partisan voting behaviour anyway. Aside from that the rest of it is just a mishmash of anecdote and slanted political claims.
Anyway, as Rob points out, making any claims based on a sample of 160 is worse than meaningless.
I realise I’m missing something here, but 32% is less than a third, just as 49% is less than half. I mean, if I were a Labor strategist, I’d be seriously worried that Latham got only 32% of the youth vote, and Howard 41%. It’s the 2PP figures that are really indicative, IMHO (although the Green vote would presumably flow to Labor on preferences).
Vee, I think you are probably right. Interesting if there’s any research on that.
Rob, well, yes, Labor should be worried. But she’s moving from a point about partisan votes (which you can’t necessarily equate to social conservatism, as should be obvious - there are socially conservative Labor voters and socially liberal Liberal voters) to a huge construction of a generation of “fogies” for which there’s no warrant. Sure, 49% is less than half but if 41% is the vote for the Right (=”Howard”) then you can’t make the claim that there’s not a disproportionate vote for the Left - since federal elections normally see winning margins of less than 2%. But in any case her assumptions are nonsense.
Vee, I doubt there’s any such research. You’d need to do longitudinal surveys, which are very expensive.
I think the more serious complaint is Andrew Norton’s: that you can’t generalise about a generation based on such a ridiculous sample. The figures indicate that zero young men vote for the Nats, ferchrissake!
Vee: Andrew Leigh’s paper, linked in the post, touches on the issue of cohort voting trends, but concludes that the effect (if it exists — it’s hard to control for) is insignificant compared with the effect of changing votes as people get older.
I read that “extract” in the Australian today too, and thought that it was just appalling - a poor advertisement for the book. Reading Mark’s post - I also noticed the way in which the voting figures for the 2004 election didn’t appear to support her statements.
Something that really struck me was the small amount of actual data used to back up her argument. It’s worth considering her thesis, as young people have moreso voted for the LEFT (borrowing Mark’s notation) in recent decades. So, fine, see if it’s changing. Good thing to do. But there wasn’t much actual data about this - rather, she talks about South Park (!).
I like South Park as it pokes fun at things which can be given this treatment. It doesn’t mean that I and others who like its irreverence are conservative fogies. I’d say that it pokes fun at all sorts of ideas/icons, whether they’re of the RIGHT or the LEFT. It’s not an exclusively left-bashing exercise.
When I wrote “It’s worth considering her thesis, as young people have moreso voted for the LEFT…”, I meant that more have voted for the LEFT than the RIGHT, not that the percentage of young people voting for the LEFT has decreased over time.
Have to ask (or shout!): where is the proper analysis of politics in the popular press???????
The South Park analogy on its own was enough to put me off the rest of the analysis that was being proposed. It was all the more ludicrous to make a South Park analogy to symbolise the triumph of conservative kiddies on the very day that the ‘bloody Mary’ South Park episode was withdrawn from screening on SBS because it might have offended some Christians, and the Family First Senator calls on it to be banned altogether (although I would bet stacks he’s never even seen the episode) and also complains about how Christians are more picked on and powerless than anyone else.
Maybe it just peeves me because South Park is one of the few TV shows I still conciously try to watch (apart from the magnificent President Bartlet now once again striding across our TV screens on the ABC), but this notion that South Park is some sort of comic juggernaut of the Right mercilessly puncturing the sacred cows of the Left really shits me to tears. South Park punctures the sacred cows of the left, right, middle and any other direction yet to be defined. The fact that some conservatives feel the need to claim South Park as some sort of political vindication gives me hope, as it means they are more desparate to find some solid signs of validation than I thought they would be.
Well said, Andrew.
And good to see Jeb and the boys and girls back on tv!
“The fact that some conservatives feel the need to claim South Park as some sort of political vindication gives me hope, as it means they are more desparate to find some solid signs of validation than I thought they would be.” - here here, Andrew!
I read a (smaller ?) version of Ovington’s article some time ago in the Australian, which was similar to the South Park bit of this piece - and remember thinking along Andrew’s lines. Is this rubbish the sort of stuff that passes for serious analysis? Why do people waste their time writing stuff like this? Do they think it’s actually worthwhile?!
Or is it too hard to do the work properly?
Around the time of the 2004 Federal election, I conducted a mock election for one Federal seat amongst the students I tutor in Government-Business Relations (a basic politics course for business students at Griffith) at Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The 2PP amongst the students was approximately 50/50.
The interesting comparison is between this result and the responses by the same students to specific current policy issues in one of the assignments they are required to do. This assignment asks students to look at a current debate over whether, and how, governments should regulate a particular business sector in pursuit of a purported, but contested, public interest goal. The students can play the role either of advocates for a business or peak business council (usually opposing additional regulation and/or advocating reduced regulation), or advocates for one or other campaign group favouring regulation on social, environmental, health or moral grounds. In my experience over four semesters, a majority of the students prefer to act as advocates for the campaign groups rather than the business groups, and write submissions advocating regulation in the public interest, as they see it.
This small case lends support to the view that there is a disconnect between young people’s views on issues and their partisan voting behaviour. Perhaps it could be posited that this is partly due to the ALP failing to sufficiently distinguish its policies (or the public perception of its policies) from those of the Coalition on issues which are salient with younger voters.
Finally, I agree with other posters who have condemned the absence of empirical grounding and/or the misanalysis and over-interpretation of selected slender snippets of empirical data in most commentary on “social issues”.
Given that the bloody mary episode was largely a dig at Catholicism (with a gut churning scene of the Pope receiving a crimson shower), I would say that the episode would have offended Mark more than Fielding. Its a pity really, given that the main message of the episode had nothing to do with Catholicism or bleeding Madonna, but was a critique of alcoholics anonymous. Including the bloody Mary subplot overshadowed the rest of the episode… which was rather funny and thought provoking.
It is very true that South Park cannot be claimed by either left or right… there is a good example in the episode where the town becomes divided into pro-war/anti-war camps. The kids have to write an assignment on what the founding fathers would have thought of the war… Cartman goes back in time to visit the continental congress when they are debating whether or not to fight the British. He comes back saying that America was designed in such a way that they could both oppose and be for the war, so they could simultaneously appear strong and decisive, but also peaceful and conscientious. Its called having your cake and eating it too.
Back on topic however, I am always troubled when the media tries to use poll data as a stand-in for the vox populi… that somehow the results from such a small sample space represent the views of the entire nation. I’m also worried about the number of people who might choose their own views from the results of polls; that reality may be somewhat generated by the model, so to speak. If, in a poll, 41% say they support Howard, then the media says that 41% “of Australians” support Howard, rather than 41% of the sample space. Yet when tens of thousands of people rally on the streets, they are just as likely to be labelled a “mob” than given any credibility. We are too quick to allow polls to speak for us, I think. In a democracy, that is troublesome. Grassroots action is the staple of democracy, not the surveying of some demographer.
One thing I should note is that in 2007 we will see an arriving cohort of young voters who can barely (if at all) remember Labor in Government. Two episodes in my life have probably informed my unreflexive voting behaviour more than anything else… firstly, the relief of my parents at the defeat of Hewson in 1993, and their devestation at Howard’s victory in 1996. I remember being worried because, having been born in 1984… I had hitherto only known a Labor federal Government (of course the Liberals were in the NSW Government for a portion of that time, but I don’t remember them very well at all… except not liking the look of Nick Greiner, for some reason). I can only hope that Young voters will know enough about Labor State Government to realize that the ALP is not a natural party of opposition. Which brings me to my next point… Ovington’s poll should really have been cross referenced with voting preferences in State elections. Obviously a very large number of people in this country vote for the coalition federally and the ALP in the state elections.
“or bleeding Madonna”
- should read “or A bleeding Madonna”. “Bleeding” is not used as an expletive here.
How about revealing that if 41% of people voted for Howard and the Coalition, more than half the people voted AGAINST him?!??
“but this notion that South Park is some sort of comic juggernaut of the Right mercilessly puncturing the sacred cows of the Left really shits me to tears. South Park punctures the sacred cows of the left, right, middle and any other direction yet to be defined. The fact that some conservatives feel the need to claim South Park as some sort of political vindication gives me hope, as it means they are more desparate to find some solid signs of validation than I thought they would be.”
Absolutely agree but be patient with those who get carried away and misunderstand the intent of the show, if you can. When a sacred cow of the liberal left gets attacked on large or small screen it is sufficiently rare and interesting that the injuries of the other sacred cows are overlooked.
Actually inspite of its remorseless and totally admirable attacks on liberals I don’t like the show so much. It seems as you indicate too anti-everything for my taste. Having said that, Team America was brilliant. The vomiting scene. The rightwing country and western song… “What would you do, if you had to give up your dreams for freedom?…Freedom isn’t free; there’s a hefty fucken fee”
Worrying about Howard and his hagiography will become rather irrelevant if he migrates to the U.S. as soon as he retires/is deposed.
James Hamilton: ==”South Park punctures the sacred cows of the left, right, middle and any other direction yet to be defined”
Yea. Verily.