Executive summary
This paper provides an analysis by Commonwealth electoral division of socio-demographic data from the first release of the 2006 Census of Population and Housing. The electoral boundaries used in this paper are those applicable to the next federal election.

Crikey comments:

During the Howard years, there has been a realignment in progress.

Although Laborâ??s vote is still heavily based in the working class, there is another pattern at work: the better-educated voters are moving towards Labor, and the less educated are moving away. It is the same pattern seen in the â??Yesâ?? vote in the republic referendum of 1999. (Incidentally, thereâ??s nothing unique about Australia in this respect – the same realignment is going on even more clearly in the United States.)

if â??moderateâ?? Liberals cannot see whatâ??s happening to the Liberal Party then theyâ??re walking blind.

They can see it all too clearly. The only ones who are blind are those punched in the face so often that their swollen eyelids won’t open.

Alex Hawke frightens the living daylights out of me.

He’s all piss and wind. Stand up to him and you should be right.

I have a feeling that itâ??s small l liberal seats in NSW rather than other states that will swing heavily

Why not both? Labor needs 16 seats and not all of them will come from NSW.

A MULTI-million-dollar sports park is being secretly planned by the Howard Government in a pre-election effort to placate two Brisbane businessmen facing losses on their waterfront homes because of the construction of the $2.3 billion Goodna bypass.

Federal Liberal MP Michael Johnson, whose blue-ribbon electorate of Ryan was recently deemed an “ultra-marginal seat” by party strategists, has been negotiating with John Howard’s office to build two parks on either side of the controversial bypass, even pushing them as a way to force the resumption of homes that border the planned road.

The bypass cuts through two peninsulas in the south of Ryan, each bordered on both sides by the winding Brisbane River.

Mr Johnson, who flatly refused to discuss the proposal yesterday, has had plans drafted and appears to have won the Prime Minister’s support for the parks, which were proposed in response to complaints by the businessmen that the bypass had slashed the value of their multi-million-dollar properties in the leafy outer western Brisbane suburb of Moggill.

Under the plan, the home-owners will be paid full value under a resumption order for the parks or have their potential losses reduced with the parks lifting the value as an improved buffer to the bypass.

Confidential emails between Mr Johnson and Mr Howard’s office, obtained by The Australian, reveal the Liberal MP complaining about how he is “bleeding on this issue” and that “Ryan needs to have this investment”. They detail the plans for the parks – including a cricket oval, football fields, lakes, shops, cafe and putt-putt golf – which have been kept secret from the Labor state Government, which is carrying out resumptions and pre-construction analysis on behalf of the commonwealth.

grand unified theory of wetness

This gets my vote for phrase of the week.

That way the blogosphere can deride your grand unified theory of wetness in one hit rather than in piecemeal fragments. It’d save a lot of your time and energy too.

Jack Strocchi, I have to totally disagree with your analysis. In 2004, by and large the only marginal seats that swung TO the ALP were inner city seats populated by significant populations wealthy social liberals.

That is irrelevant to Mark’s “Rudd’s Luvvies” theory. He is talking about leafyish blue-ribbon LN/P seats becoming marginal LN/P because a largish share of silver-tails voted against their class interest (wedge politics!). Not latteish marginal ALP seats becoming blue-ribbbon ALP because a larger share of hipsters voted with their cult interests.

Antonio says:

When I campaigned in the seat of Brisbane in 2004, I DEFINITELY got feedback that social liberals voted specifically against Howard because they were disgusted with the War in Iraq, treatment of refugees and legal equality for queer people. These were the very same people who I know voted for Howard in 1996.

The Decline of the Wets cuts has decimated both the Wet minor parties and the Wet factions in the major parties.

The minor “social liberalism” parties are the GREENs and DEMs. Their share of the vote has been in secular decline for a decade, declining from 13% in 1996 to 9% in 2004.

And the Wet factions in both major parties are on the bones of their arses (Theophanous jailed, Costello turned). Meanwhile the major party leaders (HOward and Rudd) are more conservative than ever.

I have been pointing this out early since the early noughties. But apparently people like Mark and yourself are unwilling to face facts.

Antonio says:

The Doctor’s wife phenomenon is real but I personally don’t think it will be a factor this time. My feeling is that the social liberals will not be as anti-Howard and pro-ALP as they were last time.

If the Doctors Wives phenomenon was a real political force then Wet constitutencies in the leafy suburbs would have been pushing GREENs and DEM candidates in the Senate and urging an overturn of the LP’s Dry policies through their branches in the HoR. This has not happened ergo the Doctors Wives are an urban myth.

Also, Antonio, I have a feeling that it’s small l liberal seats in NSW rather than other states that will swing heavily. I rue the day I decided to live in Mitchell, rather than North Sydney.