Western Australia turning against Anthony Albanese

As we know, the current Prime Minister was able to become the Prime Minister with the lowest vote the Labor Party had had in the best part of a century. And in part, that became clear on election night, even though there wasn't a majority of seats that had actually been won by the time he was taken to the stage. In actual fact, they had to wait until the results came in from Western Australia. This speech happened just after the polls had closed, and the assumption was that they would end up getting the seats needed to actually become the government. Now, where the Labor Party won its seats matters, because Western Australia is the new focus of a news poll tonight. You see, in Western Australia, they won four seats off the then-Liberal Party. In New South Wales, two. It was the Teals that did the damage there. Victoria, two. But again, the Teals that did the damage there. And also in South Australia, there was no Labor seats that had been won in Queensland, which of course is quite the concern for them. And no changes when it came to Tasmania. Well, as we saw at the time, generally speaking, as it is for every government, regardless of when and regardless of which political party it is, you end up being swept into power and you create a backbench, a big enough backbench that by the time you go for your first re-election, you will end up burning some of those one-term MPs, because the big idea that you're taking, in the case of John Howard, would result in the popular vote actually being won by the Labor Party, but the most number of seats being held by the Liberal Party. Of course, the Labor Party had changed and then returned. They had changed the Prime Minister in its first term and saw a huge number of seats lost at that point in time. And of course, Malcolm Turnbull had stolen the Prime Ministership, which meant that they lost seats as well at the end of the first term of the Liberal government. So again, it is highly likely, unless somehow electoral gravity doesn't apply to this Prime Minister and this government and the people around it would suggest that's the case. But at some point in time, they are going to lose some of what they had. You see, they only ended up winning 77 seats on the night, then the Aston by-election, which meant that they ended up getting to 78 seats. So they can only really afford to lose three around the country before we're talking minority government. Now, how they manage minority government is a debate for the three years after that and let's not get ahead of ourselves when it comes to elections. The one that's in front of us will either be towards the end of this year or most definitely has to happen in the first half of next year. But in Western Australia, the surge that produced more seats than any other state in the Commonwealth for the Labor Party has now turned into, well, quite a dive. How many seats they will lose there at the next election is one of the big talking points behind the scenes amongst political people. Do they lose one, two, all four of what they gained? Well, we'll all wait and see. But of course, what happened since the election of the Albanese government in Western Australia? Now, of course, the Prime Minister spent all of last year and $450 million arguing for a constitutional change and that, of course, being the voice. Now, it was 60-40 in the national vote of a hell no, but in Western Australia, it was 63 and a bit percent of people who said, hell no, we don't want it. They, of course, had their experience with a crumbling state government that is appalling, particularly when it came to the national heritage laws. And while the news might tell you and people in Canberra will try to tell you everything's looking better, well, when you go to the shops, you know that it is vastly different than when this government was hired. Western Australia, like everything else, has seen the Prime Minister spend an awful lot of time overseas on Toto 1, mucking around as Airbus Alba. And whatever magical connection he seemed to have with Western Australia seems to have been broken because, again, news poll. They've been having a look at the past three months of polling and they've broken things down state by state. And it shows that the Labor Party is now down the best part of 3%, and that would be enough to flip at least to maybe three seats if there was an election held this weekend. Now, of course, there's not an election to be held this weekend, but you get my point. I don't know that that'll be the case for all the teal seats, but that one looks like it's going to be particularly competitive. But as you can see here too, the only other people who went up are One Nation. Now, One Nation, who had produced a senator before from Western Australia, very nearly cracked places in the State Parliament. It's one of those places that no one really talks about, but it has a pretty stable One Nation vote. But the Greens, teal and others, of course, are what keep Labor alive. But there's something that is also happening across the country that we need to have a look at over the past three months. And it is the huge disparities that we have in the different age groups in Australia, and to whom they wish to park their vote. Now, when you have a look at this here, 18 to 34-year-olds, the Labor Party leads them by six points. 18 to 49, the Labor Party leads them by just three points. It was a lot higher, particularly in that 35 to 49 group in the 2022 election. Over the age of 50, well, the advantage is clearly with the Liberal Party, greater than even the advantage that the Labor Party has with the youngest of voters amongst us. 50 to 64 is 8%, and 18% disparity between the Liberal vote and Labor vote for people over the age of 65. As they say, the older you get, the wiser you get, and in this case, politically, the more conservative that you get. But I want you to see there that there's clearly an advantage amongst the Labor Party with people under the age of 50, and a disadvantage over the age of 50. So, you may be one of these people who's sitting back and saying, well, hang on, if they're losing here and they're losing there, how does it always end up that the Labor Party ends up just in front, say 51-49 or 52-48? Well, I'll show you. It's because, as I told you during the early stages, when it looked like 60-40 yes vote for the referendum, there are more voters in Australia under the age of 50 than are over the age of 50, which is why your advantage with those voters, and in this case, the Labor Party in single digits but deep into double digits for the Liberal Party over 50, it means that, again, if everyone under the age of 50 voted in one way, they would outnumber the people who voted over 50. It's why there's always such a big battle between 35 and 54. But when we're looking at politics into the future, if you automatically look at that and go, well, OK, young voters are going to decide everything, well, young men are increasingly more conservative than they were even three, five and definitely 10 years ago. Now, their brand of conservatism is a little more Joe Rogan than it is Robert Menzies, but you get the idea that there are trends within trends and numbers within numbers. This is the show that tries to show you the data, and yes, I have a strong opinion about what I think it means, but I want you to know what is going on inside our country. Remember, Prime Ministers, well, they come and go based off the news poll numbers, and the Prime Minister is proudly telling anyone who will listen, I haven't lost a news poll yet. But again, the data within the data, and thank goodness today the news poll organisation actually started to not just give us the headline numbers, but firstly break it down by states, because you can see, if they're sinking in Western Australia, well, then seats will come off them, and the inevitability of us sitting around until very late on election night to work out whether the government is going to be barely in minority or a significant number in minority, and whether that's going to trigger one or two votes to get them over the line, or a need to go negotiating with the Greens, well, that's again one of the stories that are going to be most fascinating about however long we have between now and whenever the Prime Minister decides to have an election. So you've seen when it comes to age, yes, there are more people under the age of 50 than over, but the advantage, 50 plus, gets way higher for the Liberal Party than the yes advantage Labor has with younger voters.