This report is the first in a series of CIS research papers focusing on intergenerational political attitudes and electoral behaviour. This report investigates the extent to which age is a factor in determining a first preference vote for Australia’s major centre-right political parties; the ex ante coalition between the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia — the Coalition.

The report presents estimates of the ‘election adjusted’ primary vote for the Coalition parties from the Australian Election Study. These election-adjusted primary votes reflect the difference between a generation’s primary vote for the Coalition, at a given age, and the average primary vote for the Coalition among the overall electorate in elections held in 1966, 1969, 1980 and from 1987 to 2022.

These estimates suggest strong — and intergenerationally diverse — age effects in Australian electoral behaviour.