#intifar chowdhury

[tomorrowusa]

We've been seeing a flood of news stories that young males have been flocking to rightwing parties around the world in recent elections. But the opposite seems to be true in the recent election in Australia. Men under 30 have apparently swung towards the left of center Australian Labor Party (ALP) which won a landslide victory this month.

(Researcher Intifar) Chowdhury says the 2025 election results stop “any kind of insinuation” that young men in Australia are becoming more rightwing. “If you look at electorates with a higher share of both first-time voters and voters under the age of 30, the higher the percentage, the more likely they are to swing towards Labor,” she says. “I will be very surprised if we see a swing among young men towards the Coalition, because no matter what demographic you’re talking about, there is some swing against the Coalition.” If her hypothesis is correct, it’s bucking global trends. At the 2024 US election, men aged between 18 and 29 turned out in force for Trump, while women of the same age voted for Kamala Harris by an even wider margin. Similarly, men at the 2024 UK election were twice as likely to vote for Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK, while young women were more likely to vote Green. In Germany, there are signs young men under 30 are moving towards the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). China, Tunisia and South Korea have also experienced a surge in support for rightwing candidates among young men. But data suggests young Australians have been repelled by Trump’s leadership style. A March study of voters aged 18-44 found just 23% surveyed said Australia would benefit from a leader like Trump; 58% said “absolutely not”. A sense of dread about social cohesion and the rise of the far right were consistently cited as major issues among a cohort of almost 1,000 young voters who reached out to Guardian Australia over the election campaign. Chowdury describes what occurred this election as the “Trump slump”. “I think Australia just became more moderate, to be honest,” she says.

It's not so much a swing to the left as it is to the moderate left.

All but one of the nation’s five youngest electorates were won by Labor in 2025 after previously being held by the Greens. (Ryan was too close to call at the time of writing.) “Australians in general tend to vote heavily based on their issues of importance,” Chowdhury says. “If you think about the generational grievance of the younger generations, it’s being locked out of the [housing] market, the erosion of the safety net, job precarity.”

This Australian phenomenon seems driven to a large degree by the media scene in the country.

Hannah Ferguson, 26, is head of independent news commentary page Cheek Media Co and co-host of the Big Small Talk podcast, both aimed at younger audiences. She says Australia’s election felt like a “battle of influence”. “Murdoch media were projecting the Coalition to win and endorsing them, and it felt like I was in this bubble where I had to prove myself and push my audience to believe they were the change-makers,” she says. Ferguson says she has often been asked why “all the influencers in Australia are progressive”. She says that, excluding Fox News, America’s mainstream media is perceived as leftwing, allowing influencers to position themselves against the “establishment”. While Australian influencers are also responding to “the establishment”, she notes it’s in a media “heavily dominated by Murdoch”. “The commentators who have risen up in this election are the ones challenging the far-right establishment of media in this country,” she says.

What we in the US can learn from this is that we need to talk more consistently and frequently about the rightwing establishment being responsible for the mess in the US. We should also promote influencers and podcasters who are effective at presenting common sense progressive viewpoints.

[stephanurban]

Younger Australians feel like the game is rigged. And with the spending gap widening, who can blame them? | Intifar Chowdhury | The Guardian