Just why that is the case makes my mind boggle sometimes because there’s a fair bit of difference between the two when you really get into it. But that seems to be a pretty familiar thing in political campaigning - often the “why” isnt figured out until a fairly substantial period of time after the “how” has already been developed and deployed.

Most professional party pollsters in the western world (including Australia) use what we would call upper blue/lower white collar workers (or a derivative thereof) as the political demographic that we call “battlers” - where upper and lower are defined by income thresholds.

If we want to look at how the “howard battlers” went this election, we need to look at the demographic that actually caused the moniker to be invented in the first place - upper blue/lower white.

Not just blue - which is what tends to be looked at.

I think the takeaway from all this is not whether or not blue collar workers have switched to the Coalition. Rather, what is happening is a collapse of rusted-on voters for either party. We might say that the proportion of Useful Idiots is declining. This can only be a good thing.

“In the past they’ve been left out and the tax cuts have gone to those at the top end,” he said.

“But the focus of the tax cuts that begin from the Rudd Government on July 1 are people like hairdressers, mechanics, child care workers, teachers aides, tradies [sic] and labourers.”

I knew someone who until recently employed 3 mechanics and paid them the award wage plus quite a lot of cash - which he did because “everyone does it” and he didn’t want his employees to go elsewhere. The mechanics also had use of the workshop on the weekends where they pursued their own various businesses - in total they earned a lot of money.
One of my brothers has a business in which he employs “subbies” or as Wayne says ‘tradies’ - problem is that they’ve made so much money in the last 10 years they’re now semi-retired and living off their property investments. Try to get a ‘tradie’ to do anything in Perth!

I agree that the lower-income white collar occupations could reasonably be called the modern working class (I’ll check subjective perceptions), but politically they are different: in every election but one 1987-2004 more have voted Liberal than Labor, the reverse of the pattern for blue collar voters.

A very shrinking group under that definition, and very “last century”. The Industrial Age has been and gone.

The “lower-income white collar occupations” you mention in @3 are closer to the modern working class: call center operators, check-out operators, clerks, salesmen, etc. With modern managerial practices, they’re just as much under the thumb as any 1950s labourer was, and for the most part identifies themselves as such.

I’m not surprised… Australian housing: On the severe side of ‘Severely Unaffordable’, says worldwide study, the 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. http://www.ozrealestatenews.com/2008/02/housing-affordability-how-does.html

Gotta love the free market, eh.

What’s blue collar anyway? John Hewson used to wear investment-banker striped shirts with blue collars. They looked hideous.