Australia’s Indian community has become one of the strongest voting blocs in the country, with research suggesting as many as 85 per cent backed Labor at the last federal election. Pollster Kos Samaras, director at RedBridge Group Australia, made the point while speaking with Drew Pavlou on his podcast The Great Australian Multiculturalism Debate: Kos Samaras v John MacGowan, excerpts of which were carried in The Iceberg Substack.
The numbers underline the shift. Australia’s Indian-born population reached 916,330 by June last year. Added to that are 200,971 second-generation Australians with Indian ancestry and 113,947 “secondary migrants” born elsewhere but of Indian background. By 2026, the Indian-born population is expected to hit 1.1 million, a dramatic rise from just 95,000 in 2001, according to a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade snapshot.
For Samaras, the depth of Labor’s support is clear. “85% of the Indian diaspora voted for the Labor Party at the last election, thereabouts. It varies across the country,” he said. Yet the figures sit alongside a paradox: socially and culturally conservative communities still vote for Labor. “They are socially conservative, aspirational, small business entrepreneurs, and they’re voting for Labor. And I would argue for sectarian reasons,” he explained.
That disconnect was highlighted in fieldwork Samaras and his team conducted. “We interviewed a whole bunch of young Indian men in Sydney probably about six months ago. Long conversation with them, and we said, ‘Okay, so what are your values? What do you think of the cost of living crisis right now?’ The response: ‘I just work harder.’ Which is, of course, that cultural thing. If you’re faced with hardship, double down. And we went through all their values across a whole range of things, and they’re clearly conservative. They should be voting Liberal. So we said to them, ‘So why aren’t you voting Liberal?’ ‘They don’t like us.’”
The shift is already visible in key suburban seats, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, where Indian communities have grown rapidly. Newspoll figures show Labor holding onto its gains since May, with other pollsters placing its two-party preferred vote even higher. While older migrants often took more than a decade to engage with politics, newer arrivals are enrolling sooner, often within four to six years. That means a faster impact on marginal electorates.
The debate around migration has sharpened, with housing affordability at its centre. Samaras argued that economic policy, rather than migrant arrivals, is the real driver of discontent. “Young people cannot buy a home in Sydney, full stop, unless their parents help them, and they have to be wealthy parents. And this is the core problem,” he said. “Now, do migrants contribute to that? Probably on the edges. But it’s not the core issue. The core issue is we have this obscene housing market that’s been in place for 20 years, and one government after another—red, blue, pink, it doesn’t really matter—have all rejoiced in the explosion of property prices in this country.”
At the same time, younger Australians, including those from migrant families, are moving away from traditional voting habits. Samaras notes that “approximately 50% of Gen Z did not vote for a major party at the last federal election. Approximately 30% voted for the Greens, irrespective of geographic location. Labor’s Gen Z, 2PP vote is well over 65%. Millennials over 60%. The LNP’s primary is below 20%.”
Gen Z, he added, is “Australia’s most diverse generation. Around 45% either speak a language other than English at home or were born overseas. They are also the most highly educated generation in history, especially women.” That means Indian Australians, who already boast the highest university attainment of any migrant group, are deeply entwined with the generational shift now reshaping the political map.
The political weight of the community is likely to grow. The rise of Indian voters has already forced both major parties to rethink campaign strategy. While the Liberals tried and failed to make inroads, Labor’s dominance has left open questions about whether the pattern will hold across generations. Samaras points out that Italian and Greek voters once backed Labor overwhelmingly, only for their children and grandchildren to drift towards the Liberals. Indian Australians may follow the same path—or they may not.
What is clear is that in electorates with heavy Indian populations, the numbers are now impossible to ignore. Whether in Harris Park in Sydney’s west or Tarneit in Melbourne’s West, the diaspora is reshaping not just the demographics of local schools and businesses, but the political balance of whole electorates.
As Samaras put it: “These Australians… many of them, when we talk about the Indian and Chinese diaspora, for example, they’re your doctors, they’re your nurses, they contribute absolutely positively to Australian society. They are voting more on sectarian reasons, they are culturally and socially conservative. And yet they vote Labor.”
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😊Australia’s Indian community, now 916,330 strong, backs #Labor with 85% support.😮 Culturally conservative yet voting Labor due to sectarian reasons.🏡 #HousingCrisis fuels political shifts.📊 Migrants reshape voting trends. #TheIndianSun @KosSamaras
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