Investment property owners and the election

A seat-by-seat demographic analysis of voters has found that the negative gearing policies of both major parties influenced the final outcome of the federal election.

The analysis by Australian Demographic Strategies (ADS), led by former Labor Senator John Black, found a strong correlation between the numbers of property investors in a seat and voting outcome.

“In simple descriptive terms, we can say – to 99.9 per cent confidence levels – that seats with large numbers of investment rental properties voted for the Coalition and swung far less towards the ALP,” said the ADS report, which was commissioned by the Property Council. 

ADS’ data crunching also found that investment property and investment property income were significant drivers of the Coalition’s 2016 two party preferred vote and the 2013 to 2016 two party preferred swing to the Coalition.

“When we ranked federal seats by per capita investment properties, the top four seats – Reid and Bennelong in NSW, Kooyong in Victoria and Curtin in WA – swung towards the Coalition by an average of two per cent, despite a national swing of three per cent to Labor,” ADS reports.

“The bottom five seats for per capita investment properties – Bass and Lyons in Tasmania, Macarthur and Chifley in NSW and Blair in Queensland – swung an average of 7.5 per cent to the ALP.”

Property Council chief executive Ken Morrison says the ADS research sought to analyse the political impact of negative gearing policy in the election. 

“We have consistently put the economic case for retaining negative gearing, but politicians make decisions based on economic, social and political variables,” Morrison said.

“We commissioned this research to understand the political impact of this very important policy issue.”