On my walk this morning I was listening to this radiolab podcast on how people try to categorise voters in the US. It started off with the Soccer mum category that helped Clinton remain elected in 1996. And this got me thinking, what type of voter am I?
Hipster Bogan
If I was to give myself a stereotype, I like the phrase; “hipster bogan”. I live in a big city, enjoy pretentious coffee, avocado on toast and craft beer.
However I’m very much a bogan at heart too, I’m one of the many young Australians that grew up in rural Australia (Tasmania) and migrated to a big city for work, however that trend appears to be changing too.
My family is very working class. My dad is a stereotypical bogan; think tradie with tattoos, blue singlet with shorts, say’s lots of “yeah mate”, drinks beer etc.
I vote 1 Science Party
Climate change is my biggest concern, when I think about my future it’s my biggest worry. The last 2 elections I’ve volunteered and voted for the Science Party. It’s not because I think they’ll win, but if they get enough votes then eventually the bigger parties actually have to pay attention to them.
Also these parties get more funding based on the number of first vote preferences. And with the way preferential voting works here in Australia, a major party still gets my first vote even when I put them second, here’s an explainer:
Some other concerns I have
My other main concerns are access to education for poor Australians and jobs for people with low education rates (e.g. truck drivers).
What are people with low literacy rates going to do when jobs like truck driving are more automated? I have this post reflecting more on the future of work.
I’d vote Labor over Greens
I have a tendency to vote Labor over the greens, even though I’m from Tasmania and that’s where the greens party started. The Greens party originated over protests of flooding lake peddar when Tasmania was building more hydro electric dams.
I view the greens history and a lot of their motivating factors to get in the way of creating jobs even though they have great intentions. I would prefer to vote for sustainable old growth logging in Tasmania over no old growth logging at all.
I slightly prefer Labor over Liberal
However my main deciding factor for who gets my 2nd vote is the person whose voice I can tolerate hearing the most. The two major parties are just as shit as each other. Last election Morrison got my second vote, I think Turnbull also got my second vote before that. However Rudd definitely got my vote over Abbott.
Though Abbott did give us some comedic gold:
Kevin Rudd Media Enquiry
Rudd had this petition to investigate conflicts of interest in the mainstream media. The petition got close to 500,000 signatures and I was one of them.
I did enjoy watching this interview with Rudd which goes into more detail about our biased media (Friendly Jordies is a comedic shit poster on youtube):
How would you describe your voting stereo type? Are you a soccer mum? A hipster bogan like me or some other label?