Why Albo wins, and ScoMo loses, with women voters

Fifty years ago it was blokes in singlets who voted Labor governments in and women who voted them out. Now those blokes have bought 4×4 dual cab utes and become contractors, and it is professional women under 50 who are Labor's bedrock voting bloc.

The trend has been on for a while, although it reversed slightly with Bill Shorten's leadership, but it has accelerated under Albanese. It is also part of the business model of the teals, most of whose candidates are drawn from this demographic.

Normally elections aren't won on the personalities of the leaders – they're a factor, but not decisive. But when you have an election where one side has been in power for nine years, and appears to have run out of plans, and the other side fear any plan could lose them the election, you are left with nothing but personalities.

Morrison is a well-known commodity. He's the alpha male who kept the borders safe. But while not the schoolyard bully, there's a bit of the schoolyard loudmouth about him. He can play ukulele or promise to be more empathetic in a partial reprise of Labor's "real Julia" gambit, but it's not going to work if the tweaks aren't consonant with the Scotty we all think we know.

But the public doesn't really know Albanese, so a change in glasses, stepping out with a new love, parading the pooch, and retailing stories of growing up in poverty on a public housing estate can shape perceptions substantially.

Albo's certainly not a bully. He's more the beta male and probably not a natural leader.

Morrison says his weakness is "I tend to go straight into problem-solving mode ... when I do that, people sometimes don't think that I really understand how they're feeling". Classic alpha male.

Albanese's greatest weakness? "I have found my biggest weakness is my loyalty." Classic beta, and also classic follower.

These personalities collide in a period when female preferences in men appear to be shifting, and combine with a widespread social valorisation of the victim to give Albanese an edge with the key female demographic in an election where sentiment is more potent than policy.

Women feel safer with, and more nurturing of, Albanese than Morrison, and Morrison's behaviour during the campaign has further accentuated that tendency.

If you hit Albanese, it's going to make a certain proportion of the female vote feel more nurturing and caring for him. Yet, the Coalition campaign has been one long sledge of Albanese. Of course Labor probably started the sledging with a long-running campaign against Morrison's character, but as the alpha, he's presumed to be able to take it, and as a bit of a bully, it's just rough justice.

When Scott Morrison asks Jenny what she thinks he cops flak, but when Albanese says he always tries to think what his mother would do he gets applauded. This seems inconsistent but can be explained by the different personalities. Jenny is seen as being delegated to make a decision by Morrison, so that's patriarchal alpha male, while Albanese is a delegate for his mother, that's a loyal feminist beta male.

When Morrison talks over Albanese in a debate, he's monstering the more demure debater, while if Albanese talks back, he's just standing-up for himself. Watch how Morrison stands – he has a big jaw, and it is jutting aggressively out, while Albanese is smaller and more submissive. This juxtapositioning increases Albanese's vulnerability and hence appeal.

When Albanese can't remember a critical fact that's OK. It's effort more than outcome that counts, and Albo still gets a ribbon.

This is the first election campaign I can remember, apart from the one featuring Julia Gillard, definitely an alpha of her own gender, where we haven't had two alpha males against each other. Shorten lost the last election partly because he made women uneasy, so that made up for Morrison's record of toughness (bullying) over borders.

It is also the first Australian postmodern election. At least in an emotional sense it is the poor and dispossessed who hold the strongest hand, and tradition and traditional answers are presumed to be wrong. The biggest sin is to offend someone, particularly someone less "privileged". Truth is no longer a defence against offence because we all have our own truths, particularly "lived" ones.

Your failure can be pinned on someone else's success if they come from an oppressor group.

Kevin Rudd's victory had touches of this dynamic as well, as did those of Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden.

So, when it comes to swings I'll be looking at seats where there is a higher than average proportion of women 20-50.

These are marginal seats (in order of concentration of likely affected women) like Brisbane, Reid, Swan, Bennelong, Chisholm, Pearce, Leichardt and Cowan.

This is Morrison's real women problem – not that he is a misogynist, just that the man he represents has fallen out of fashion. The Liberals are going to need to plot their way around this, or they will be in the wilderness for quite some time.