Predictions about the slow death of the Liberal Party miss the mark

It seems that after every election loss there is the mandatory series of opinion columns enthusiastically overusing hyperbolic words like ‘crisis’ and ‘death’ to ascribe the state of affairs for the vanquished party. In 2019, apparently the Labor Party faced an ‘existential crisis’ with an uncertain future. Fast forward to 2022 and pundits are predicting the Liberal Party facing a slow descent into irrelevance.

Recent reports make for dour reading if you are one who supports Australia’s leading centre-right party. Only 1 in 4 millennials are supporting the LNP. For Gen X, the numbers slide even further to 1 in 5. It appears the party is on the brink of a demographic cliff.

Certainly, the party has issues that need addressing. That is without doubt. As I have written previously, the Liberals should democratise preselection so it is open to members of the community. The party should also consider the merit of allowing local candidates to build their own brand by voting as they wish on social and cultural issues, while promoting itself as a united party in regard to economic and budgetary management.

There is work to be done. Yet the 2022 election results make for interesting reading and analysis. See below:

The federal coalition was the most supported political grouping with 35.70% of the vote. Labor, for all its supposed success, achieved its lowest primary vote since the 1930s at 32%.

Yet the point of interest for mine is 1.3 million voters who opted to place 1 beside either One Nation or the United Australia Party. By and large, the LNP has bled votes to this micro parties; however, the issue is that they are not guaranteed the return of preferences, unlike Labor and the Greens.

Whereas 80% of the near 1.8 million Green voters preference Labor, One Nation and UAP voters are not nearly as generous to the LNP. The preference return from these parties to the coalition hovers between 60-65%. This explains why Labor was able to grasp power with such a low primary vote. As we recently saw in the Victorian election in addition to these federal results, the ALP are masters at preference harvesting, especially from Greens and teal ‘independents’.

This presents an opportunity for the LNP. It needs to go after the 1.3 million voters who supported these parties. This represents 9% of the national voting population. While the combined Labor/Green vote sat at 44%, the collective vote of the LNP/ON/UAP sits at close to 45%. This is not even factoring in the 91,000 voters who supported the right leaning Centre Alliance and Katter Party.

This reality should cause pause for anyone prematurely predicting the death of mainstream conservative politics in Australia. The current Labor government is not necessarily the product of some utopian progressive awakening in Australian politics, but a byproduct of the fractured conservative vote.

There is indeed a pathway back to power for the LNP and it lies with these voters. Logistically, the party must address its incapacity to harvest preferences as effectively as Labor can, but strategically, it must consider how it can regain the trust of this significant number of voters in order to be competitive in 2025.