Under-55s and higher educated voters propelled Labor to victory, study finds

Labor was propelled to victory over Scott Morrison by women, under-55s and those with higher levels of education, with people in the latter two groups most likely to have abandoned the Coalition since the 2019 election.

Those are the findings of a survey of 3,500 voters by the Australian National University and researchers at the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, released on Monday.

Labor has argued it built a broad coalition to win the poll, but post-election analyses have focused on gender due to the extraordinary success of female candidates, particularly independents.

The study found that Labor enjoyed an edge among women, with 35.2% voting Labor and 30% for the Coalition, compared with men, 35.7% of who voted for Labor and 34.2% for the Coalition.

Coalition voters tended to be older, non-Indigenous, with low education, living outside of capital cities and with household incomes higher than the bottom 20%.

Young voters were slightly more likely to have voted for Labor and substantially more likely to have voted for the Greens.

The Coalition also lost more voters in capital cities, with 30.7% of former Coalition voters living in capitals changing their vote in 2022, compared with 23.0% of former Coalition voters living outside capital cities who voted for another party.

More than one in 10 voters, 13.6 %, made up their mind on election day and a further 19.7% did so in the days before 21 May.

Some 21.9% reported changing their intended vote from April 2022.

The largest aggregate flow between April and May 2022 was from Labor to the Greens, with 4% of all voters switching their vote from the centre-left party to the minor party.

That late surge appears to have helped the Greens pick up three seats, including Labor-held Griffith and Liberal-held Ryan and Brisbane.