Renting millennials bulldozed Victoria’s Libs, but Labor and Greens are flatter too

We all knew the Victorian election would be decided by millennials, who now make up more than one-third of voters and are the dominant generation in most Melbourne suburbs.

Well, everyone except the Liberal Party, it seems. Amid the recriminations for its disappointing loss on Saturday, braver Liberals such as pollster Tony Barry have bemoaned its lack of appeal to younger people, despite its foreseeable consequences. 

The Liberals failed to pick up eyed-off seats such as Ashwood and Box Hill, now dominated by millennials. They also lost Bayswater, which demographically shifted hands from boomers to millennials in the past five years, and Glen Waverley where the centre is dominated by gen Z.

These are just some examples of the Coalition’s pervasive demographic problem. And its overreliance on a small, crumbling fortress of ageing electorates was hardly surprising — the last Newspoll before the election showed only 36% of 18- to 34-year-olds said it was time to “give someone else a go”.

But if 26- to 40-year-olds dominated, why did the Greens, long popular with millennials, wake up to a nasty surprise on Sunday after prematurely declaring a “Green wave” the night before? And why did we see such large swings against Labor in first-home-buyer hotspots?

Young renters lean to the left

As with the May federal election, left-wing parties drew much of their support from renters. This isn’t just because renters tend to be younger; indeed, it is partly because younger voters disproportionately rent and are locked out of home value appreciation that they remain so solidly left-leaning (though education and social views also play a role). 

For instance, Prahran, which boasts the second-highest proportion of renters in the state (59.9%), swung further towards the incumbent Green. Albert Park (fourth highest, 55.5%) was retained by Labor despite the Greens gaining, while in Footscray (sixth highest, 44%) the Victorian Socialists surged. The Victorian average of renters is 29.6%.

Why then did the Greens increase their primary vote by only 0.2% as of Monday morning, with their few gains coming mostly from Liberal and Victorian Socialist preferences? This was largely due to an impressive performance by the Socialists, who positioned themselves strongly with a promise to freeze rent increases for five years. The Greens cannot presume younger renters will drift to them naturally — they must fight for them.

Teals remain hamstrung between affluent and young

A few faint positive notes for the Liberals were found in Brighton and Hawthorn, which swung slightly towards them. These suburbs remain divided between Liberal-leaning old money and left-leaning young renters who have moved into new housing developments.

In May, the teals consolidated the latter while peeling off some of the former, as Labor did in Hawthorn in 2018. But as Labor-aligned pollster Kos Samaras told Crikey: “It appears some asset-owners who voted teal at the federal election went back to Liberals this time.” This will cause trepidation for teal MPs at the federal level, whose voting base is dangerously split.

Barry told the ABC on election night he believed the Liberals held Kew despite a strong independent challenge on the backs of asset owners. But long term, the leftward drift of renters remains bad news for the Liberals in a housing market with a diminishing proportion of homeowners. “We are becoming the party of landlords, not the party of renters,” he said, noting the high percentage of renters in Victoria compared with other states presented a particular challenge.

Auction-heavy outer suburbs swung against Labor

Conversely, in the less affluent north and western outer suburbs, Labor held on but suffered enormous primary swings — as large as 18% in Kororoit. The Liberals increased their primary votes, and Family First and Victorian Socialists also polled surprisingly well.

“Those leaving Labor are breaking both left and right,” Samaras said. “The numbers are now so significant and so widespread that the adage that wealthier outer-suburban residents are the only ones moving against Labor just doesn’t hold up any more. We’re seeing a much broader contagion.”

Part of this may be driven by a lack of investment in previously safe seats, which “Labor is working on, but they’re playing catch-up”.

Patricia Karvelas wrote for the ABC that “working-class” residents in the outer suburbs were harder hit by lockdowns because they were less able to work from home. But Labor has lost ground there for multiple elections. And as in the east, class conflict is as much within communities as between them. These electorates contain both persistent pockets of disadvantage and swelling estates popular with first-home buyers priced out of inner suburbs.

We know homeowners are more likely than renters to vote conservative. Those opposing vaccine mandates, a focus of right-wing campaigns in these seats, also came more often from higher-income families than lower- and middle-income ones.

While we can’t know for sure without more granular data, it’s conceivable Family First’s gains came from older voters, the Liberals from middle-aged mortgagees, anti-lockdowners from higher-income, non-tertiary graduate males, and the Socialists’ from younger renters.

Despite Labor’s western headache, the Liberals remain most disadvantaged by these demographic headwinds. As Samaras says: “If you think the millennials present problems for the Liberals, just wait for gen Z.”