Youth Federal Election Voting Intentions: A Statistical and Graphical Analysis of Newspoll Quarterly Data 1996-2010

Youth voting intentions over the most recent 15 years of Newspoll quarterly data were investigated using both statistical and graphical means. An initial approach (after Watson, 2008) separated the various age groups, 18”24s, 25”34s, and all others (35+), on their voting intentions for Labor, the Coalition and the Greens in calendar years leading to a Federal Election in order to compute confidence intervals and t”tests on any age group differences. Graphs of the youth voting intentions for the parties were contrasted with those of the others and consistent statistically significant differences were found for the vote for the Coalition and the Greens between these groups. While Labor was distinguished on the voting intentions support of the 18”24s from the others in 2010, 2007, and 2004, it was the 25”34s who had the greater voting intentions percentages in 1998 and 1996.