It’s often said that people tend to become more politically conservative as they age. But millennials and generation Z are bucking the trend – supporting the Indigenous voice to parliament and backing centre-left and left parties at increasing rates in recent elections.
Political scientists say there has been a “fundamental shift”, at least partly because the experiences of younger voters are so much different from previous generations.
There’s a “new kind of adulthood” as one expert described it: younger Australians are leaving the family home, living in share houses, getting married, having children and buying their own home much later than previous generations did, if at all.
They also have much higher rates of university education, women’s labour market participation, and more identify as LGBTQI+, culturally diverse and not religious. Other studies have found a larger share of younger voters mistrust institutions such as political parties.
“I don’t think that the campaigns are talking to me,” said Alex, a millennial-age teacher in Sydney.
“I think that they’re talking to my parents. They’re talking to gen X voters. And politicians, who are also gen X for the most part, are speaking to themselves, because their generation has the most wealth and power.”
The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines baby boomers as those born between 1946 and 1965, generation X as between 1966 and 1980, millennials between 1981 and 1995, and generation Z 1996 to 2011.
In the 1960s and 70s, younger voters (predominantly baby boomers) were as likely to vote for the Coalition as for Labor. But in 2022 just 22% of gen Z voters and 27% of millennials voted for the Coalition. By comparison 36% of all voters and 45% of baby boomers backed the Coalition.
Support for the Coalition among younger voters started trending away in the 1990s, said Dr Shaun Ratcliff, a political scientist at Accent Research who authored the report on generational voting.
This continued into the voice referendum. Ratcliff pointed to a survey he ran just prior to the referendum which tracked the yes vote for gen Z at 60%, 33% for gen X and 28% for baby boomers.
Ratcliff said the different life experiences of younger voters at least partially explains this divergence.
“We know that a lot of political socialisation happens quite young. In our teens and 20s. So the things that most likely affect our politics are the things that happened to us when we’re still young and malleable.
“As we get older and set in our ways, it’s not that our politics can’t change. But they’re harder to change.”
We can see these differences in life experiences by comparing millennials in 2021 with baby boomers in 1991 and gen X in 2006 – in these years all three generations were aged between 25 and 39.
A greater share of millennials are renters than gen X or baby boomers were at equivalent ages. Fewer millennials are homeowners or have lived in the same place for at least five years.
One factor is the rising cost of housing – the national median dwelling price was $136,324 in 1991 according to Corelogic. That grew to $345,922 in 2006 and $732,954 by 2021. The increases were even greater in particular cities – Sydney went from $182,566 in 1991 to $1,140,071 in 2021, and Melbourne from $130,116 to $805,650.
But incomes have not kept up. In 1991 the median dwelling price was about five times the median income for someone aged 25-39. By 2021 this was 9.23 times.
Interest rates were significantly higher in 1991 (9.5%) than 2021 (0.1%), but because of the increases in house prices, both baby boomers homeowners in 1991 and millennials in 2021 were spending about 20% of their incomes on mortgage repayments. Interest rates have increased significantly over the past year, however. So homeowners will likely be paying a lot more now.
There were stark differences in voting behaviour in the 2022 election between those who do and don’t own homes. More than 30% of gen Z, millennial and gen X homeowners voted for the Coalition, and more than 47% of baby boomer homeowners did as well.
But just 18% of gen Z and millennials who don’t own homes voted for the Coalition in 2022.
Assets and home ownership are important factors, said Ratcliff, but he also noted the affect of social factors and identity. Millennials and gen Z are much less religious than baby boomers and gen X, they have higher rates of university education and identification as LGBTQ+. Nine per cent of millennials and 17% of gen Z identified as LGBTQ+ in a 2022 survey.
“People in these younger generations are more likely to be LGBTQ+,” Ratcliff said. “That doesn’t just affect the politics of the people that identify that way. Gen Z and millennials are more likely to have peer networks – siblings and cousins that are gay or bi or trans.”
Ratcliff said this alone had a huge effect on the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
“In a survey we ran while people were voting in the same-sex marriage plebiscite, 79% of millennial voters voted yes. While baby boomers were almost evenly split and the silent generation 36% voted yes.
“If it had been silent generation and baby boomers only, I think the plebiscite probably would have failed, but millennials were … massively in favour.
“These are momentous changes actually taking place in terms of generational effects,” the head of the Australian Election Study, Prof Ian McAllister, said.
“It’s education. It’s the social networks. It’s what people do. It’s the assets they own. That has lots of flow-on effects to things like gender patterns, in politics and so on. And it’s actually a fundamental change in society, which is going to significantly affect politics over the next 20, 30 years.
“[But] political parties are very adaptive actors. And when they see an existential threat to their vote, and their ability to win elections, they’ll adapt to it.”
