Source : the age
By Angus Delaney
Julian Carlin is young, Christian and conservative. “Honestly, I don’t agree with the Welcome to Country,” says the 18-year-old Carlin. “Like, my dad’s a veteran, and he hates it.”
If Generation Z is returning to traditional values, then the RMIT university student should fit right in. Any number of headlines attest to the trend. “Gen Z Men Are Shaping a New Conservative Future,” USA Today reported on Wednesday. Large-scale Australian research also shows Gen Z has departed from the progressive trajectory of their forebears to become more socially conservative.
Joe Moran, 20, was on track to become a conservative. Then something changed.Credit: Dean Sewell
But that is not reflected by opinion polls before Saturday’s election. This masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor indicates that, on a two-party preferred basis, 65 per cent of men aged 18-34 are backing Labor this election, up nearly 10 per cent on the 2022 level of support.
“It looks like young men were more likely to be taking a chance on change, but taking a closer look in the context of the campaign and international uncertainty has made them think twice,” said Resolve director Jim Reed. “The gender gap has now slammed shut.”
Joe Moran is part of the shift. The Sydney University arts student was on track to grow into a reliable Coalition voter.
For two years in high school, Moran went through what he calls a “kind of internet, social media-driven … rightward shift” started by his admiration for American content creators such as Ben Shapiro, a right-wing culture warrior who called homosexual activity a sin in 2018.
It’s a trajectory that mirrors millions of other young men, who have been drawn into traditionalist politics through conservative podcasts and social media or because they are feeling disaffected by the rise of feminism upending traditional gender roles.
Sydney University research indicates Donald Trump’s podcast strategy, where he appeared on shows popular with young men such as The Joe Rogan Experience, boosted his support by 1 to 2.6 per cent, which could have been decisive in some states.
But the 20-year-old Moran has undergone a remarkable conversion since the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, which has pushed him so far away from Shapiro that he became a Labor Party member. Now he thinks conservatives such as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton are “lacking empathy”.
Emilie Dye, a research analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies think tank, said the trend to the right internationally is relative.
“There’s a bit of a misconception, looking at the data from overseas, that young men in particular are shifting to the right, when in fact, they only look right wing compared to young women,” Dye said.
“Both young men and young women in Australia are shifting to the left. Millennials are pretty consistent; they’re just not shifting to the right, as is normal for people as they age.”
A similar dynamic is born out in a study of federal government survey data by independent research institute e61, which found earlier this month that Gen Z men were less progressive than those in Gen Y or X. But on the survey’s seven point score, Gen Z men still skewed more away from traditional gender views than towards them.
In America, men turned out for Trump. At the 2024 US election, 53 per cent of all male voters aged 44 and under supported him, up from 45 per cent in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. At the 2024 UK election, data from polling company YouGov showed men aged 18-24 were twice as likely to support the right-wing populist party, Reform UK, as women of the same age.
But Trump has not been a boon for the Coalition.
Melbourne University Liberal Club president Kai Bowie said if young men were drifting away from conservative politics, it was likely due to recent concern about the impact Trump’s tariffs could have on the Australian economy and voters equating the president with Dutton.
Bowie, whose club is not formally affiliated with the Liberal Party but does campaign for its candidates, said its members tend to support classical liberalism and value the Coalition for its economic management, but are socially progressive.
“Certainly we’re a more moderate country in general than the States, and so I think a lot of young guys who would’ve been pretty vocal about supporting the Coalition are probably less so because of those comparisons to Trump,” Bowie said.
“Dutton has spent the last two and a half years building up this image of a strongman, which has been very effective from a polling point of view from a very long time, [but] has sort of come undone at the last sort of hundred-metre stretch of the race because now he’s being compared to Trump.”
That is reflected in the Resolve Political Monitor polling, which found that Trump’s presidency had made 33 per cent of polled voters less likely to vote for Dutton, and just 14 per cent more likely.
But while culture wars have dominated parts of Gen Z discourse, Intifar Chowdhury, a voting trends researcher and lecturer in government at Flinders University, said the cost of living mattered deeply to younger generations.
Young voters are more supportive of Labor because it’s seen as better at addressing the cost of living, says Intifar Chowdhury.
“The main battleground is cost of living, and it’s a key issue that people are worried about. In particular, younger generations who have been … sort of at the deep end of the cost-of-living and inflationary crisis for various reasons,” Chowdhury said.
Matthew Mason, a 21-year-old economics student at the University of Melbourne, remained undecided until days before the election, but was leaning Labor because of its pledge to cut HECS debts by 20 per cent. “So if I want a 20 per cent haircut, I know who I’m voting for,” said Mason, who lives in the seat of Maribyrnong.
Dye, the Centre for Independent Studies researcher, says that Gen Z and Millennials are only growing more important in politics.
“We’re now reaching that point where Gen Z and Millennials are making up 50 per cent of the voting bloc, so that is absolutely worth looking at, worth paying attention to.”
