Birds of a feather flock together – and they also vote together

Sydney, Australia, 3rd September 2013: A recent study by Data-driven Marketing, exploring how demography and attitudes interact with political leanings, has found that one of the strongest influences on voter preference is how an individual’s neighbour votes. Responses from 1,200 Australians were evaluated against a wide range of demographic, financial and attitudinal factors, and found that the Landscape geodemographic segment that individuals belonged to was, in fact, the strongest predictor of political orientation.
So how do Australian neighbourhoods vote? Not necessarily the way you would think in some cases.
Labor support is strongest in areas that fall into the Landscape segments of “New Arrivals” and “City Seniors”. These are areas with high migrant and senior citizen populations respectively. They are also the population groups most likely to rate Education as a critical factor for the new government to address – an issue the Labor party has been particularly vocal on in the lead up to the September election. What is notable is the absence of a distinct Labor skew in segments anecdotally expected to be Labor strongholds – “Student Communities” and “Blue Collar Families”.
Coalition preferences are highest in areas that Landscape classifies as “Success Stories” – affluent areas, and Liberal’s traditional heartland – but also, interestingly amongst “Suburban Families”, a segment comprised of middle-income families, many from blue collar industries.
‘We went into this with a hypothesis that we would confirm some obvious factors behind political preferences’ says, Chris Smith, General Manager of Data-driven Marketing, ‘and we also hoped to find out at a grass roots level how different socio-economic groups were coping in the current economic climate. We got answers to those questions but also a few startling insights into what influences Australians’ political leanings, and how voter preferences are invalidating the long held stereotype of the Labor or Liberal voter.’
Overall, 38% of respondents rated the economy as the most pressing issue for an incoming government to address, with Student Communities the population group most vocal on this issue. Immigration policy was ranked second, with 23% of respondents rating it as their top priority. Trade relations, transport infrastructure and the environment were rated the least important issues to address, at 4%, 5% and 6% respectively.
“This paints an interesting picture of Australians’ priorities approaching the election” said  Mr Smith, “particularly the concern about our economic prospects amongst younger educated Australians. It will be interesting to see how the rhetoric of both parties’ campaigns influences this over the remainder of the campaign, and our plan is to do a follow up study immediately after the election to determine how the campaign has shaped actual voting behaviour as well as preference”.
Landscape is a geodemographic segmentation tool developed by Data-driven Marketing, part of Equifax. It draws on a range of demographic, behavioural and attitudinal data from many sources to characterise the population into 13 groups with 41 underlying population segments.