Forget the retired politicians posing as hackneyed political commentators
Population growth in Malta
My column in The Malta Independent last Thursday:
We need to hear from the demographers. Look at the newspapers and the television talk shows. It’s wall to wall retired politicians and not particularly bright journalists talking about what they think the election results mean.
I’m sorry, but who actually cares what they think and why does it matter? Voting patterns are a numbers game and not a matter of opinion or ‘observation’.
This is all about numbers. And unless you know who those people are and where they are coming from, all calculations are pointless and inadequate.
No political party can segment the market unless it has the demographics. There is no such thing as The People. There are only different social groups, and within those wider social groups there are many, highly or subtly differentiated other groups.
Muscat targeted the market so efficiently precisely because he had people to segment it for him. Labour’s last four years in Opposition were a terrific exercise in market segmentation. People and groups were targeted and instead of being insulted at the thought that they had been segmented and treated as targets, they were actually flattered.
The demographic factor has been completely ignored in the elections of the last few years, by journalists, so-called political observers and the Nationalist Party (at least from what I can see and without being privy to information).
It is certainly not talked about on television or discussed in the newspapers though it is the most obvious basis for some really interesting analysis.
The number of registered electors is growing immensely (relative to population size) year on year. In which social groups is the biggest growth taking place?
The Labour Party and the Nationalist Party know how people in different socio-economic groups tend to vote, because they have polls to show them that. The PN has the vast majority of the vote in the upper socio-economic group, for instance, and Labour in the lowest. In fact, the first sign that the PN is going to fare badly is when people in the upper socio-economic group begin speaking against it, which in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they influence others.
The newspapers, in this election, did not ask for a breakdown of the vote in terms of socio-economic groups, in the surveys they commissioned. In general elections, they tend to do so.
Read the rest via The Malta Independent (link below).
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-05-29/opinions/forget-the-retired-politicians-posing-as-hackneyed-political-commentators-5232590848/
This was an excellent contribution. It was an objective analysis and puts the spotlight on a very interesting issue.
Yet the usual naysayers still managed to write negative comments just because it is your column. I find it bizarre how they still read you when they reject everything you write just because it is you to write it.
I’ve highlighted the word “not” in this sentence from your article, which I think shouldn’t be there.
“Many of what I call the ‘Super One crowd’ and ‘Nouveau Labour’ are *not* technically in socio-economic group A because of their recently obtained education and their jobs/business interests/careers. But they remain instrinsically working-class – even under-class in some cases – in attitude and values.”
I know it sounds corny but we were discussing this over dinner this evening and I raised the subject without having been privy to what you had written.
One fact of the matter is that people in the South (DE) are having more children than AB socioeconomic group members: careers and delayed motherhood and consequent infertility are main culprits.
If a woman does not work and has no career she does not need to wait to have children if she has a mate.
Educated and career women have to consolidate themselves and their careers before having children and this inevitably leads to less births in this group.
This is not the only reason for young people following Labour but it needs to be studied.
It’s not the “South” but the Inner Harbour Region.
Traditions die hard.
Inner city.
So what you’re saying is that for the PN to win another election, they need to become more Socialist than what they already are?
Absolutely not. Quite the opposite in fact. They need to mobilise the ABC1 voters, and turn them into their unwitting spokespersons.
And they won’t do that by bleating on about kemm tajnikom gid taht it-tinda.
They could also do it by encouraging birth control and emigration. But’s that’s a hot potato and my oven gloves are in the wash.
Excellent evaluation of situation.