A growing bloc of Indian-Australian voters is reshaping Australia’s political map, with implications for marginal seats in Melbourne and Sydney, according to polling analyst Kos Samaras.
Writing in a recent analysis for his Substack, Samaras, director at RedBridge Group Australia, outlines a shift in voter behaviour that challenges long-held assumptions about the Coalition’s base, pointing to demographic data and electoral trends now concentrated in key urban electorates.
“Picture a Saturday morning in Wyndham Vale. Or Schofields. Or Glen Waverley,” he writes, describing a household anchored by professional work, private schooling and a strong focus on family stability.
He notes that such households would historically have been viewed as core Liberal voters. “If you described this household to a Liberal Party strategist in 1995, they would have told you you were describing the median Coalition voter,” he says. “Aspirational. Small-business minded. Family first. Educationally ambitious. Socially conservative. Privately insured. Home-owning.”
Yet he states plainly: “They are not.”
Samaras links this shift to demographic change confirmed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, highlighting that Indian-born residents have become the largest overseas-born group in Australia. “As of June 2025, there are 971,020 people in Australia born in India, narrowly overtaking the 970,950 born in England, for the first time in our history,” he writes. “A decade ago, the India-born figure sat at 449,000.”
He argues that these voters align closely with the socioeconomic profile traditionally associated with Coalition support. “On every demographic and lifestyle indicator the Liberal Party has ever used to identify its base, they should be its bedrock vote.”
Samaras attributes the divergence to political messaging over time. “The reasons are not mysterious,” he writes, citing “every immigration debate the Coalition has chosen to wade into for the last fifteen years” and references to “every dog-whistle on ‘Asian crime’” and repeated calls to reduce migration without clarity.
“Indian Australian households were watching,” he says. “They are not foolish. They understood the gestures were not addressed to them. They also understood the gestures were addressed about them.”
He describes the strategy as “Chasing Pauline”, arguing that efforts to recover votes from right-wing minor parties in regional areas have come at a cost in metropolitan seats. “Every attempt to claw back votes from One Nation in the regional seats, costs the Coalition a multiple in the urban seats where Indian and Chinese Australians actually live.”
Samaras points to the geographic concentration of these communities in electorates that determine federal outcomes. In Victoria, he notes, “India-born residents are now the largest single overseas-born group,” with large numbers spread across electorates such as Chisholm, Menzies and Aston. In New South Wales, he highlights seats including Bennelong, Reid and Parramatta.
“Every attempt to claw back votes from One Nation in the regional seats, costs the Coalition a multiple in the urban seats where Indian and Chinese Australians actually live.”
“These are not safe seats for either side,” he writes. “They are the seats that determine whether either major party forms government.”
He also highlights internal structural challenges within the Coalition, arguing that its representation is shaped by states where migrant demographics differ. “Walk into the federal Liberal party room and listen for accents. The dominant voices are Queensland,” he writes, adding that these perspectives are formed in regions where migrant communities remain largely English or New Zealand-born.
“Their political imagination of a ‘marginal seat voter’… is shaped by demographics that bear less and less resemblance to the seats that actually decide elections,” he says.
Samaras contrasts this with Labor’s position, attributing its advantage to geography rather than strategy. “The federal party’s centre of gravity sits in Sydney and Melbourne,” he writes, describing closer day-to-day interaction between Labor representatives and migrant communities.
He reinforces the scale of the shift with age data, noting a generational divide. “The median age of an England-born Australian is now 59.8. The median age of an India-born Australian is 36.1,” he writes. “One cohort is drifting out of the workforce. The other is buying its first home, having its second child… and starting its own company.”
Samaras says that the trend is still developing. “The data published this week is not the end to this new Australia. It’s just the beginning.”
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