Labor’s blank sweep in Australian election suggests younger male electorate are bucking world tendencies. But why?

Wchicken UFC president Dana White gave the impression on degree for Donald Trump’s victory cope with, he credited a string of debatable male influencers – the Nelk Boys, Theo Von, Adin Ross and the “mighty and powerful” Joe Rogan – for the Republican win.

Six months later, Anthony Albanese took Labor to a landslide victory in Australia, claiming the scalps of the Coalition and Greens leaders within the procedure.

Albanese, too, actively courted content material creators. But there have been main variations. For one, some had been girls. And they had been in large part modern.

For the primary time, millennials and gen Z electorate, comprising 47% of the citizens, overtook child boomers this federal election as the biggest vote casting bloc.

Experts say Labor’s blank sweep is going towards tendencies noticed throughout portions of the west, Asia and Africa during which younger male electorate are an increasing number of leaning in opposition to the suitable. And the content material creators might be taking part in a vital position.

Hannah Ferguson, 26, is head of unbiased information observation web page Cheek Media Co and co-host of the Big Small Talk podcast, each geared toward more youthful audiences. She says Australia’s election felt like a “battle of influence”.

“Murdoch media were projecting the Coalition to win and endorsing them, and it felt like I was in this bubble where I had to prove myself and push my audience to believe they were the change-makers,” she says.

Ferguson says she has incessantly been requested why “all the influencers in Australia are progressive”. She says that, except Fox News, America’s mainstream media is perceived as left wing, permitting influencers to place themselves towards the “establishment”.

While Australian influencers also are responding to “the establishment”, she notes it’s in a media “heavily dominated by Murdoch”.

“The commentators who have risen up in this election are the ones challenging the far-right establishment of media in this country,” she says.

In that sense, she suggests, Trump was once the Coalition’s “worst asset”.

“There’s been this belief that men vote based on economic policy, on reason, and women vote emotionally based on social policy, and that divide has been driven and entrenched by the US,” Ferguson says.

“What we saw in Australia … is that positioning is harmful. Across the gender spectrum, Australians said ‘we see through the establishment, we see through the kind of divide the Coalition are pushing, and they’re not giving us any policy’.

“Australia still has issues with hatred and division, but this election showed you can’t run on woke culture wars, because people will reject you.”

Prof Philippa Collin, a social scientist at Western Sydney University, says there’s “no doubt” Australia’s social media panorama performed a vital position.

“We know already that it’s an important source of news and information, especially for younger voters,” she says, pointing to the proliferation of election explainers directed at younger other people amongst modern content material creators.

But Collin cautions towards portray them as totally left wing , bringing up common anti-government assets comparable to Rebel News’s Australian bureau leader, Avi Yemini, and comic Isaac Butterfield, who campaigned towards independents and the Greens.

“The really interesting thing about their content, and where it’s possibly different to some of the content that we see coming out of the US, is it seems to kind of be much more moderate in its presentation.”

Content that turns out “less angry and less direct … possibly resonates more with an Australian audience,” she says.

She believes younger other people, whether or not their politics skews additional left or correct, really feel present media choices directed at them “ are lacking”.

Bucking world tendencies?

An research by way of early life and democracy researcher Intifar Chowdhury, of the Australian Election Study (1996-2022) discovered that whilst gen Z males had been politically extra conservative than gen Z girls, they had been nonetheless extra modern than older generations of fellows.

Chowdhury says the 2025 election effects prevent “any kind of insinuation” that younger males in Australia are changing into extra correct wing.

“If you look at electorates with a higher share of both first-time voters and voters under the age of 30, the higher the percentage, the more likely they are to swing towards Labor,” she says.

“I will be very surprised if we see a swing among young men towards the Coalition, because no matter what demographic you’re talking about, there is some swing against the Coalition.”

If her speculation is proper, it’s bucking world tendencies.

At the 2024 US election, males elderly between 18 and 29 became out in drive for Trump, whilst girls of the similar age voted for Kamala Harris by way of a good wider margin.

Similarly, males on the 2024 UK election had been two times as most likely to vote for Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK, whilst younger girls had been much more likely to vote Green.

In Germany, there are indicators younger males below 30 are shifting in opposition to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). China, Tunisia and South Korea have additionally skilled a surge in improve for rightwing applicants amongst younger males.

But knowledge suggests younger Australians had been repelled by way of Trump’s management taste. A March learn about of electorate elderly 18-44 discovered simply 23% surveyed mentioned Australia would take pleasure in a pacesetter like Trump; 58% mentioned “absolutely not”.

A way of dread about social concord and the upward thrust of the some distance correct had been constantly cited as main problems amongst a cohort of virtually 1,000 younger electorate who reached out to Guardian Australia over the election marketing campaign.

Chowdury describes what took place this election because the “Trump Slump”. “I think Australia just became more moderate, to be honest,” she says.

Generational variations

That’s to not say there are not any gender variations. Chowdhury’s research discovered younger Australian girls moving in opposition to the left at a sooner charge than males, with 34.0% of Gen Z males vote casting for the Coalition in 2022 in comparison with 19.8% of ladies.

But the larger indicator of vote casting personal tastes, polls tracked by way of Guardian Australia during the last 12 months counsel, is the generational hole.

All however one of the crucial country’s 5 youngest electorates had been received by way of Labor in 2025 after in the past being held by way of the Greens. (Ryan was once too with regards to name on the time of writing.)

“Australians in general tend to vote heavily based on their issues of importance,” Chowdhury says.

“If you think about the generational grievance of the younger generations, it’s being locked out of the [housing] market, the erosion of the safety net, job precarity.”

Konrad Benjamin, the author in the back of Punters Politics, courts an target audience of predominantly millennial men with an identical considerations – in large part financial: a “rigged” housing and taxing machine and abuse of energy by way of massive firms.

Age apart, Benjamin says his target audience is “very diverse”. “I had a bloke from Family First in Newcastle say ‘your stuff is amazing’, and then the Greens ask to get a picture with me,” he says.

“I’m pointing out the problem, and I’m just making sure people have the right scapegoat … that our guns are pointed upward to the establishment and not at each other, or to immigrants or vulnerable people.”

He doesn’t know the way some distance Australia can learn into its election effects. “Maybe people lurch to the right because Trump was charismatic – you get Dutton with charisma, maybe the blokes would lurch to the right,” he says.

But he thinks a part of the worry across the Andrew Tate-ification of younger males is “media moral panic” that isn’t addressing the basis reason – isolation and pessimism.

“Tate is the solution to a problem,” he says. “Young men have less economic opportunity [than previous generations], the jobs they relied on are disappearing, the relationship structure is breaking down.

“I think where the right wing stepped into that void was: where are the masculine role models?”

The compulsory-voting impact

Jill Sheppard, a lecturer in ANU’s college of politics and world family members, says the “manosphere”, to the level it exists in Australia, isn’t having the similar electoral affects as in the USA.

“That’s not because there aren’t cohorts of young men being radicalised online. I think it’s purely because of compulsory voting,” she says.

“For every young Andrew Tate watcher who enters the electorate, there are 10 very regular voters – Greens-voting, for the most part.

“There is, absolutely without doubt, a very small number of very angry young men who are voting in Australian elections – but they’re dwarfed by the young voters who either vote like their parents do, or they’re voting Greens because they’re worried about climate change and renters’ rights and Hecs.”

Compulsory vote casting additionally method mobilising any authoritarian bent amongst male electorate isn’t politically efficient, Sheppard says, because it dangers ostracising massive portions of the country.

“Do I think young conservative men are an issue right now? No,” she says.

“Do I think the parties will do anything to stop them becoming an issue? No, and they’re not incentivised to – that’s the flipside of compulsory voting.”