External and internal migration, Covid-driven moves from the inner city and the rise of millennials have changed the electorate drastically
First-time voter Riya Rajesh says she wants the Victorian government to do more to tackle housing affordability and climate change.First-time voter Riya Rajesh says she wants the Victorian government to do more to tackle housing affordability and climate change.Last modified on Sat 27 Aug 2022 21.01 BSTiya Rajesh was 17 when her family gathered around the TV to watch Scott Morrison’s “miracle” election win in 2019.
Rajesh is one of about 200,000 additional Victorians – largely young people and new citizens who have migrated from such countries as China and India – set to vote in the state election, when compared with 2018.Kos Samaras is a former Victorian Labor assistant state secretary who is now a pollster with RedBridge Group. He says this surge in the number of new voters can be credited to a “massive population boom” in the state prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Thomas Wilson, a demographer at the University of Melbourne, says available data suggests Melbourne’s population has dropped during Covid-19 and regional Victoria’s has continued to grow.“This is largely because Melbourne hosts the vast majority of overseas migrants in the state and they weren’t coming for almost two years, while many were going back home because they lost their jobs or couldn’t afford to study any more,” he says.
“Some people may have just decamped temporarily – we don’t know for sure just yet,” Wilson says, pointing to census data to be released in October.