Swan's missing middle misses analysis

This is confirmed by correlations between the 2PP vote and swings, and measures of family income. According to the statistical analysis, Labor suffered swings against it among families earning between $500-1,499 a week, but gained from families earning up to $499 a week. However, on both these fronts the correlations were not statistically significant.

The only significant correlations between 2PP and family income was found in Labor’s support from families earning between $500-699 a week, and the Coalition’s support from families earning over $2,000 a week.

Mortgage payments

Statistically speaking, the correlations between voting behaviour and monthly mortgage payments are far more significant than are the correlations for income.

The statistical analysis shows that Labor gained swings to it from people paying up to $599 a month (remember, these are 1996 figures), but suffered swings against it from mortgage payers with monthly repayments of between $600-1,499.

Statistically significant correlations are evident between the swing to Labor from mortgage payers paying between $200-399 a month, and the swing against Labor from those paying between $600-1,199 a month.

What this shows is that the political behaviour of lower level and medium level mortgage payers was quite different. Contrary to Swan’s analysis, the voting behaviour of these two groups is not the same.

Children attending school

Lastly, an analysis of how voting behaviour correlated with the type of schools children attend confirms that Swan’s analysis is too blunt to be of much value.

In terms of Labor’s 2PP vote, an extremely strong correlation was evident from parents whose children attend Catholic primary and secondary schools. These parents also swung towards Labor.

However, parents with children attending non-Catholic private schools swung strongly to the Coalition, though a positive correlation was evident among this group and Labor’s 2PP vote.

For Swan, many of the ‘missing middle’ "have private school fees to pay and don’t readily see the benefit to them of greater public investment in these areas". The statistical analysis shows that in fact, private schools per se are not a unifying predictor of voting behaviour.

On the contrary, the correlations show Labor gaining support among parents with children attending private Catholic schools, but losing support among parents with kids going to non-Catholic private schools. Speculatively, this probably has as much to do with the extent to which these parents support or oppose private investment in education as it has to do with Labor’s concerted attack on government funding of the private school system during the campaign.

Concluding observations

Wayne Swan has co-opted an academic framework developed in the context of American politics to explain political behaviour in Australia and to define the challenges for the ALP.

The analysis presented here shows that this move is fraught with real danger. The adoption of conceptual terms divorced from an examination of the empirics can lead to inaccurate political diagnosis (and by extension prognosis).

The bottom line is that Swan’s analysis is not sufficiently subtle, and is in important respects demonstrably inaccurate. It does, however, raise interesting questions about the role of transference (of an analyst’s prejudices) in ascribing political and social attitudes to pre-defined demographic groups.