Why do people raised on the poverty line and who have spent a lifetime battling big business and factory owners for fair wages and conditions vote Liberal or conservative?
And why do people who have led a privileged life with money and comforts and education, and who have never done manual work, vote Labor?
There are vast edifices of academic research on this subject, but nothing seems to explain why on any given day, people choose one candidate over another.
Psychologists are the high priests of modern behaviour and they say the weather, a candidate’s hairstyle, a nice lunch, a movie you’ve just watched or a book you’ve just read or whether your football team won or lost can influence the way we vote.
In other words, the subconscious is just as influential as the conscious part of our minds when it comes to decision-making.
This might explain the voting behaviour of that El Dorado of the political landscape — the swinging voter.
But people with entrenched voting habits — Conservatives or Labor die-hards — don’t make decisions based on hairstyle or the weather. They stay in the trench and keep faith their votes will one day see improvements, personal or universal, come their way.
Why do they do this? Is it genetic, environmental or just dogged self-interest?
It’s a difficult one, and it goes to the heart of the human condition — do we ever really know another person?
Personally, I think the only person you can really know is yourself — and even that knowledge is dubious at times.
So I’m going to ask myself — why do I vote the way I do?
My parents were middle class and voted conservative. We never discussed politics at home, it was just a given that our family came from a long line of conservative voters.
My older brothers and sister never challenged that allegiance and, as far as I know, they voted Tory all their lives. We were white, privileged, ordinarily wealthy, and we never felt the need to question our, or anybody else’s, status.
I never realised there was an alternative viewpoint until I went to college to study history and literature in my late teens.
I suddenly found there were great causes to vote for; causes that might improve the lot of everyone not just mine.
So I became a class traitor and and voted Labor for the next 20 years. When the Greens came along I voted for them because they seemed to be the only people talking about the planet.
When I arrived in Shepparton, I tried to understand the tortuous Australian preferential voting system to ensure my centre-left vote would not be a complete waste. It was a mathematical labyrinth and always baffled me.
Then somewhere in my fifties, something changed. Maybe I was just hollowed out like a corn husk as my kids picked up the torch of idealism; maybe it was because I still had a mortgage and my retirement pension was looking increasingly inadequate; maybe it was because my philosopher dog just focused on a daily walk and chicken necks — but I became less idealistic and more pragmatic, some might say cynical about the way the world worked, and politics in particular.
The great noble causes were always polluted by party-based compromises, personal careers, and short-term election cycles.
So I narrowed my vote to those candidates who stood for causes specific to my neck of the woods — better health facilities, better schools, better rail and road systems, fairer water distribution, kinder environmental outcomes and a more reliable and cheaper supply of chicken necks.
The great causes could look after themselves.
However, my vote was still going nowhere because people were so entrenched in their voting habits, Shepparton was like a reliable old backyard boiler — chugging along, under performing, and ignored.
Then somebody mentioned Independent. Wandering voters like me sat up and looked over the parapet.
Voters in the trenches wondered how somebody with no party structure or allegiances could possibly do anything useful.
Eight years later we have a new hospital, a better rail system and a brand new school. The erratic chicken neck supply issue still needs attention, but it’s on the horizon.
This is the long version of the argument that says sometimes it pays to get out of the trench and look around — you might be surprised at the beautiful view.
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