Godless Wealthy Greens? Too Rich By Half

Advance Summary

1. A recent article claims that Greens voters are likely to be rich and to be atheists, agnostics or others who do not believe in God.

2. While the connection between Greens voting and irreligion might be sound, the connection between Greens voting and very high wealth is not.

3. Booth patterns in electorates with high Green votes tend to show that very rich booths within these electorates vote Liberal rather than Green.

4. The use of family income data for inner-city suburbs overestimates the proportion of very wealthy voters within them.

5. As income is also highly correlated with Liberal voting, it is much more likely that some high-income suburbs are attractive both to very rich voters and Greens voters, but for different reasons and without much overlap.

6. There is a tendency for higher-income voters to be more likely to vote Green overall but that tendency probably weakens among the very rich and is probably strongest among those with moderately high incomes.

7. Census data by electorate is an unreliable source of information about the reasons for minor party voting.
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