Australia Election 2022 - Age before Locality

As Australia's 2022 federal election draws near, I would like to explore the idea that voter age will matter more than location.

From an NIH paper investigating Australia's attitudes to climate action: 

... there is high covariance between age and political party preference, and in our analysis which treats all independent variables as equal ... political party preference is better at explaining differences in attitudes toward the importance of Australia reducing GHG emissions. The average age is older among those people who vote for Australia’s major conservative parties, and younger for those who vote for the progressive parties.

TLDR: older people vote conservative. e.g.:

“Baby Boomers” (born 1946–1964) are half as likely as “Gen Z” (born 1996–2012) to consider it important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...

Climate change being one of the issues dividing major parties in the 2019 federal election.

Which State respondents live in, and whether they live in capital cities or outside, is not a statistically significant determinant of stated support for climate change action.

... and by extension, political party.

So narratives of urban-rural divides, while useful, distract from stronger divisions: age.

We can see from ABS' map ...

... that some geographically large electorates in are quite 'young' in that their populations have relatively fewer older Australians. (Click here if it's not interactive)

Far from the caricature of rugged white agriculturists or miners, the voters of Lingiari - the second-largest division - are very young, ethnically diverse (high indigenous population), and voted Labor. 

Most large divisions are not young, however.

I split 2019's voters into 3 age brackets: Young (under 35), Middle-aged (35-54), and Mature (55+, aligning closely with Baby Boomers).

Of Australia's 151 Electoral Divisions, the Mature have more than a 1/3 of the vote share in 128, and more than half of the vote share in 11.

The Middle-aged have more than 1/3 vote share in 96, more than half the vote share in none.

Younger voters have more than 1/3 vote share in just 4: Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, and the regional centre of Griffith. These divisions bar one are currently held by left-wing parties. Sydney and Griffith by Labor, Brisbane by the Liberal National Party (which differs slightly from the Liberal-National Coalition), and Melbourne by the Greens.  

Divisions (out of 151) with	> 33% Vote share	> 50% vote share
Mature (55+)	128	11
Middle-aged (35-54)	96	0
Young (under 35)	4	0

Electorates with a higher proportion of retirees are more likely to be held by the Liberals or the Nationals.

Youth, with its progressive-voting tendencies, is concentrated in a few electorates, and thus underrepresented on the whole. So expect broad rhetoric, but substantive policy - and policy debate - targeted at older Australians. 

Ultimately, it is the party winning the majority of divisions, rather than the majority of votes, that forms government.