35% of Nothing is - well it's SFA

According to Possum Pollytics if we look at the primary vote of the Coalition over the last 20 years, it becomes pretty clear that there are a fixed number of voters that support them regardless of how their parties (Lib, Nat) are behaving.

The Coalition never seem to get below 35% for its primary vote. Using Newspoll for example, it has received estimated primaries of 35.5% in 1998, 36% in 2001 and 35% in 2007 – but never below 35%. This suggests that there is about 35% of the Coalition primary vote that is “rusted on” given the ordinary course of politics.

So the question that I am interested in is - why?

Does this mean for example that we can have the most incompetent government (Coalition of course) in history and their primary vote will never fall below 35%?

Could the Coalition government commit the nation to an illegal and immoral war in Iraq that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people and their primary vote will be around 35%?

Could we have a Coalition government promising to build 25 nuclear reactors around the Australian coast and their primary vote will never fall lower than 35%?

Could we have a Coalition government that is so unconcerned about Climate Change that Australia becomes a pariah as the world’s worst polluter - and 35% of us will still barrack for them?

My guess is that the answer to these and other similar questions is yes - the Coalition primary vote will never be lower than 35%. This is simply because the people who are “rusted on” are unconcerned by logic or truth or facts or morals - they are only interested in their “team” - the Mighty Coalition and how they are going to defeat those Labor Socialists and their fellow travellers the dreaded Communists. And perhaps they are also interested in keeping some “face”.

My suspicion is that a large number of “rusted on” Coalition voters are actually very confused. For much of their lives they believed the utopian story put about by the conservatives - but more recently they have had doubts. The problem is that they can’t change now - after a lifetime of Coalition support - that would mean betrayal. And anyway where would they go - Cuba or Melbourne?

But the good news is that their children are going elsewhere for their political and ideological fixes - they are primarily heading to Labor and the Greens.

And so the moral of this story is - well nothing much. The dumb and the ignorant will probably always vote for the Coalition - it’s their children that we need to foster and encourage…