That’s a pretty interesting analysis.
Antony Green is a clear thinker, rigorous data dissector, and a good communicator.
And without bias in his analysis
whoops: typed this up immediately after submitting the post, but forgot to actually post the comment.
Greens voters giving preferences to the Coalition have fallen from 21.2% in 2010 to just 11.8% in 2025
Note that Antony Green ascribes this to voters who primarily identify as Coalition voters who previously might have decided to give the Greens their first vote, but who now, thanks to continuing demonisation of the Greens by the Coalition, are less willing to do that.
Green preference now flow to Labor at a rate that the Liberal and National parties struggle to achieve between each other in three-cornered contests. In reverse, Labor preferences to the Greens where counted are often about 10% weaker in flow.
This contrasts with previous wisdom that Labor and the Greens preference each other at roughly the same rate. Disappointing, but not exactly surprising, given how much Labor and Labor’s supporters tend to demonise the Greens…and given the natural votes for where the two parties sit in the political spectrum, with Labor in the middle of the Greens and LNP.
It’s an interesting relationship between the two parties, for sure. As he says at the end, they kind of hate and depend on each other at the same time.
O think it’s not that they depend on each other but rather they are competing for some of the same voters. So, even more competitive than cooperative. However, that should only matter for elections. Clearly they should be more aligned when governing.
They depend on each other in the sense that Labor needs Greens preferences and Greens voters need an alternative to a Coalition government.
Yes, positioning against the alp is mentioned in the analysisa, however, that wouldn’t explain the numbers, as there are multiple other minor parties, if the voters felt that the big 2 did not meet their needs.
Clearly they should be more aligned when governing.
God, I’d hope not, not unless The Greens were forming givernment and the ALP were needed.for a majority.
The ALP are toxic as shit as are most of their policies.
Yet they seem to share voters. So either the voters are all wrong or your being hyperbolic.
Yet they seem to share voters.
Please clarify how that’s relevant, I don’t understand the point that’s being made here.
People have limited choices of House voting (and in my experience, a huge amount have a limited understanding of parties or policy) so voting for a party cannot be assumed as endorsement of policies. Greens aren’t my favorite party and I’d enjoy seeing Labor leaders walk off a wharf, but I’ve lived in electorates where they were my 1 and 2 respectively.
(Note: “the voters are all wrong” is a hyperbolic statement)
If we take the votes as endorsement of policy, then the voters are voting for greens first and overwhelmingly, labor second. It would seem the voters of the greens feel their policies are in line enough for alp to be their second choice, above other parties large and small.
If you think the voters are misinformed and votes are not an endorsement of policy, (at least best policy availabke to vote for) then there is not really a discussion to be had, outside of marketing and politicking.
I don’t see a rational explanation as to why that would be the case outside of the article proposing that it’s a positioning against lnp. However, even then it doesn’t explain it to the extent it occurs.
They are working real hard to reduce those numbers.
We have preferential voting, and we can direct our votes anywhere we want.
Sure, although this article is talking about the overall two-party preferred preference flow in electorates, with Labor vs. Liberal/Nationals as those two parties. So purely in this metric our valid votes will flow to ALP or L/NP even if we preference them as our last options, and even if our local electorate doesn’t elect ALP or L/NP. If the two winning candidates in an electorate are Greens followed by One Nation, the two-party preferred preference flow chart will still only record whether you preferenced ALP above L/NP.
And you’re still right, that absolutely can change, and we have some power to change it, but it takes more than us directing our own votes to make that change.
