Jimmy's weblog

Miranda Devine writes: “He might be 65 but John Howard understands how younger people are thinking,”.

Her evidence?

John Howard and his spamming sons partied with a former Big Brother winner until the ghastly hour of 2am.

<sarcasm>Well, I’m convinced.</sarcasm>

Update: It appears I’m not the only one sceptical of claims that John Howard is a modern-day Pied Piper.

Andrew Norton thinks Liberal support is likely to decline over the next few decades.

The difficulties lie in the age structure of Liberal support. As has been pointed out regularly during the campaign, the Liberals’ great strength is among older voters. They do not do nearly as well among voters aged under 50. If this Liberal allegiance among ’seniors’ was a life cycle effect - if people became much more likely to vote Liberal as they became older - then this would be major Liberal asset, as the elderly are going to become a larger share of the total population in future.

If however this is a generational effect - if voters form political allegiances at a young age and generally keep them as they get older - then the Liberal support base will literally die off, and be replaced by age cohorts more sympathetic to the ALP and other left-of-centre parties.

I haven’t seen a really good study focusing on age cohort politics, but it looks to me as if Liberal support among the elderly is more generational than life cycle, though I would not be surprised, based on impressions and anecdotal evidence, if there is some tendency to become more politically conservative with age (notwithstanding doctors’ wives etc. heading the other way).

Using data from the Australian Election Study and predecessor surveys Andrew Leigh (scroll down to the paper called ‘Economic Voting and Electoral Behaviour’) finds that people born before 1950 are consistently more likely to vote for the Coalition over time.

Prior to the election, Dennis Shanahan was also suggesting Howard’s support came largely from the over 50s crowd (and unlike Miranda, he uses figures to support his claims).

After handouts to older voters to shore up the Coalition’s traditional base and the security scare of the Jakarta embassy bombing, the Howard Government has 55 per cent support among older voters.

Suggestions the 65-year-old Prime Minister is too old for the job or has “run out of puff” do not seem to have turned off older voters.

Labor had the support of just 34 per cent of older voters, but had 45 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds.