The curious case of the missing Greens voters
The rise of One Nation should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed politics in the US, the UK and the rest of Europe in recent years.
But Australia’s belated embrace of right-wing populism is perhaps more unusual because of what’s happening on the other side of the political spectrum.
Why haven’t the Greens been able to capitalize on disillusionment with mainstream parties and the hollowing out of the political centre, as their counterparts in the US and UK have done?
Since the last federal election in May 2025, One Nation has become the most popular party in the country in opinion polls, with nearly 30 per cent of first preference votes.
Meanwhile, the Greens could only narrowly escape the 12 percent of the votes they received in the last election.
Over the same period, the Green Party of England and Wales, led by Zack Polanski, increased its share of the electorate from 10 per cent to 18 per cent in the last local government elections.
So why aren’t voters flocking to the Greens in Australia?
It turns out they’re only in certain demographics, said Kos Samaras, a Redbridge polling analyst.
Among Generation Z voters born after 1996, the Green vote is more than 30 percent; This rate is much higher than that of millennial voters of the same age.
This figure rises to over 40 percent for Generation Z women.
“Gen Z is definitely different from other generations that have come before them,” Mr Samaras told AAP.
“They tend to lean too much towards the Greens, especially the women.”
The reason the Greens’ overall vote remains relatively stable is because they are losing support among older Australians to Labour, blue independents and, to a lesser extent, One Nation.
Mr Polanski told the Victorian Greens conference in May that the party needed to address the One Nation issue and tap into the anger of voters abandoning the major parties.
Greens leader Larissa Waters echoed Mr Polanski, saying her party was ready to replace Labour.
“What’s clear is that people are now realizing that the system is against them, and the major parties don’t actually want to change that system, so they’re looking for an alternative,” he says.
“What they will soon realize is that One Nation works for the same interests that fund the Labor and Liberal parties.”
Echoing New York mayor Zohran Mamdani in the US, Senator Waters says Australia should tax the one per cent, especially gas exporters.
On housing, he criticizes the government for not going far enough on proposed tax reforms, arguing that existing negative endowment and historical allocation of capital gains would move them up the ladder for future generations.
Paul Smith, public affairs director at pollster YouGov, says there is a key opportunity for the Greens to capture discontent over economic inequality and housing affordability.
He says the next election will be a fight over who can win the support of the working class, which feels unrepresented in politics.
But Mr Samaras says the Greens have failed to capitalize on this discontent.
The Greens embraced the viral gas tax campaign but failed to gain the same traction as independent senator David Pocock, whose social media posts comparing a gas export tax to a tax on beer went viral.
The Greens have also failed to make significant progress with their calls for a rent freeze and the establishment of a public housing developer.
Analysts say the Greens have failed to make headway with disgruntled working-class voters.
Mr Polanski managed to resonate with working-class voters in the UK by taking the traditional Labor seat of Gorton and Denton in a by-election with a former plumber candidate, but Mr Samaras says in Australia the Greens are still mostly seen as the party of inner-city elites.
Asked repeatedly by the AAP if she wanted house prices to fall, Senator Waters evaded by saying houses should be more affordable.
This echoes the responses from Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, who refused to say whether they wanted house prices to fall.
Mr Smith says voters want politicians to state more strongly that they stand with wage earners.
Three in four Australians surveyed by YouGov said they wanted property prices to fall, including the majority of mortgage holders.
In a statement to AAP following the interview, Senator Waters explained that the Greens wanted house prices to be lower to give first home buyers a chance.
Mr Samaras said not being more open with voters was a tactical mistake and that the Greens wanted house prices to fall in areas that were too expensive.
“The reason he can’t say that is because his constituents live in these very expensive suburbs,” he says.
Although his polarizing, fiery brand of politics failed to keep his seat in the 2025 federal election, former Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather has attracted voters angry at the status quo.
Mr Chandler-Mather, now chairman of a pro-Green think tank, was much more outspoken on housing.
“It’s very clear that we need property prices to fall,” he told the parliamentary inquiry into housing affordability on Wednesday.
Mr Chandler-Mather, who declined an interview with AAP, said the Greens needed a “major strategic pivot” in an article he wrote for online journalism outlet Deepcut earlier in the year.
He took aim at comments by Senator Waters that positioned the Greens as open to making a deal with the government to secure progressive reforms.
“The Greens need to stop perceiving change as something negotiated with Labor in parliament,” Mr Chandler-Mather said. he wrote.
“People who are already disconnected from politics will never believe that anything good can come through collusion with the political establishment.”
While Senator Waters says the Greens will use the balance of power to get results in the Senate in the short term, he has no intention of being a doormat for Labor legislation.
“We are not a pressure group. We are a political party and our aim is to win the government,” he says.
“We don’t accept that the best we can hope for is extreme repair, and people shouldn’t expect that.”
