Apparently, according to his speech at the launch of The Australian’s Howard Hagiography, John Howard was particularly struck by Caroline Ovington’s claims about South Park Howardians aka young fogies. I’ve had a go at the research she cited in a previous post, but Peter Brent at Mumble has done a demolition job.
Lots of nonsense, its main evidence being the results of a 127 sample strong 2004 AES survey (which Overington states as fact), and trawling the hundreds of opinion polls published over the last decade to find two or three showing youth favouring the government (and ignoring the other several hundred surveys showing the opposite.
Brent obtained demographic breakdowns from Nielsen polling in 2004:
Age group Coalition vote (2PP) Swing from 2001
18-24 45.4 1.1% to Labor
25-39 49.0 0.5% to Coalition
40-54 52.6 2.8% to Coalition
55+ 59.3 0.3% to Coalition
Total 52.7 0.9% to Coalition
As Charles Richardson wrote at Crikey:
Nielsen’s polling in 2004 was very accurate; the average of its last four pre-election polls picked the two-party-preferred vote spot on. So there’s plenty of credibility behind its contention that the youth vote (18 to 24-year-olds) split almost 55%-45% in favour of Labor…
(As Brent notes, the total swing is too low, because Nielsen overstated the Coalition vote in 2001, so all the swing figures should be about 1% better for the Coalition.)
So if these figures are right – and it’s both a much larger sample and a better predictive record than the AES survey Overington uses – then the Coalition vote is quite heavily concentrated among the over-40s, and becoming more so rather than less. Which, given the government’s policies, is not at all surprising; as Colebatch says, it’s “what anyone with their head right way up would expect.”
Mythology, however, is often stubbornly resistant to hard data. Let’s hope that’s not the case with the youth-enthusiasm-for-Howard thesis.
Still, the surprising thing for me is that nearly 50% of people aged from 18-24 support the Coalition on 2PP.
I would have anticipated a greater proportion for the ALP in this age tranche.
Over the last few years I’ve noticed fewer and fewer of my friends under 30 own landlines. I wonder how anyone contacts them to do actually DO phone based survey research. Unless they live with their parents I guess. It’s got to be a problem and I’m thinking it skews the result - regardless of what the result is.
Well, 45% is a fair way from 50%, Geoff, and it’s an election Labor did particularly badly in. And Angharad makes a good point about landlines.
Is there any demographic evidence on who watches South Park? Is it hugely popular among Gen Y kiddies? Presumably Gen X journos do. Since they’re the ones who constantly refer to it. Or maybe only because Andrew Sullivan or someone told them it’s right wing. (Which it’s not)…
Howard’s Young Fogeys do exist. I’ve met too many of the selfish, callous, ignorant, smug, lazy momgrels ((how’s that for stereotyping?)) - but maybe it’s the company I keep. Australia-wide, I have no idea how many there are nor what effect they really have on elections.
Thanks Angharad, hadn’t thought of that.
There were obnoxious young folk in the 80s too, going to uni in suits and ties and blithering on about the stockmarket - back then it was evidence of the “Greed is Good” and “Me” generations (before anyone had invented “Generation X”). Seems to me, Graham, that this is just more evidence that you can’t generalise.
Kim:
Yeah. You’re right. But wouldn’t it be nice to have comprehensive and less-selective-than-usual research on them?
Absolutely it would, Graham!