The old idea that a clever message or new leader can swing an election is dying fast, says RedBridge director Kos Samaras. His latest analysis, shared on X this week, suggests that politics has shifted from persuasion to psychology—and the Coalition is stuck in the wrong mindset for a new generation of voters.
“The Coalition currently sits at 37% in Victoria. To reach a competitive 43%, they need six percentage points,” Samaras said. “Simple arithmetic shows where those votes would have to come from… roughly one in five Labor voters or half of all Greens voters would have to switch.” The problem, he said, is that “political psychology research shows voters sort themselves by fundamental personality traits, particularly authoritarianism versus openness to experience.”
Kos Samaras, director at RedBridge Group Australia. Photo/XHigh-authoritarian voters tend to value order, tradition and security—traits that align with the Coalition and One Nation. Low-authoritarian voters value diversity and ambiguity, and align with Labor and the Greens. The divide, Samaras argues, has hardened so deeply that it leaves almost no one to persuade.
“Baby boomers were easier to move between major parties because they were less psychologically sorted,” he explained. “A boomer small business owner might vote Labor over Medicare, then swing Coalition over interest rates, then back to Labor over WorkChoices. Their vote responded to campaigns, economic conditions and leader appeal because their psychological profile didn’t pre-determine their politics.”
Sydney-based journalist and analyst Tarric BrookerThat era, he says, is gone. Younger voters, particularly millennials and Gen Z, “have self-sorted into political tribes that match their psychological makeup. They’re not persuadable by Coalition messaging because they don’t share the underlying threat perception that makes conservative appeals resonate. A 28-year-old voting Greens isn’t waiting for the right economic pitch or leader, their entire worldview is incompatible with authoritarian politics.”
The strategic consequence, Samaras said, is stark: “You can’t message your way past psychological incompatibility.” To win, the Coalition must “maximise their existing authoritarian base and win back moderate Liberals uncomfortable with culture war positioning.” But even that, he warned, “won’t get them entirely to 43%. They can get close by pitching to diverse Victorians who harbour a greater mix of both right and left-wing traits.” Any campaign built on peeling away Labor or Greens voters, he said, “misunderstands how contemporary electorates actually work.”
Daily Telegraph National Affairs Editor James MorrowEconomic analyst Tarric Brooker echoed that view but said the problem is broader than ideology. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a move to the centre that is desired, but engagement with the issues that affect young people in a meaningful way,” he said. Quoting writer Gray Connolly, Brooker added: “There’s no future for conservatives if young people have nothing to conserve. And they don’t.”
“The Coalition has no plan to deliver improved living standards, genuine hope for the future, home ownership or a pathway to a tangible stake in society,” Brooker said. “Until they get their act together on that I suspect that no policy platform, whether it be from the centre or the right, will dramatically improve their political fortunes.”
That diagnosis lines up with current polling: the Coalition continues to trail Labor nationally and faces fragmentation on its right flank as One Nation surges among older voters.
National Affairs Editor James Morrow added a sharper cultural critique, arguing that younger progressives’ moral intensity mirrors older conservative instincts. “Except though the left in Victoria were the biggest authoritarians going during Covid,” he said. “I do agree however that in the absence of religion rising generations have made politics their new morality and all the depredations of life in Victoria thus become joyful mortifications.”
As one pollster put it privately this week, persuasion may still be the goal of politics, but for the Liberal Party, the audience is tuning out.
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