The nation’s New Idea readers help widen the gender gap

Roy Morgan Research has added an intriguing twist to the gender voting gap by looking at the potential impact of women’s magazines.

Polls are starting to consistently show women favouring Julia Gillard over Tony Abbott by about 2 to 1 as preferred PM, and consistently being more positive about Gillard, and more negative towards Abbott, than men. Whether that’s translating into voting intention is less clear, but some raw data suggests a stronger showing among women has contributed to Labor’s primary vote rise so far.

When she became Prime Minister, Julia Gillard received royal treatment from the likes of Woman’s Day and New Idea. Women’s Weekly produced a “32-page souvenir issue”, a nice follow-up to its “makeover” edition in November, which showed Gillard in a girltastic world of pink. The initial onslaught of material on crucial issues such as how Tim Mathieson won Julia’s heart has slowed substantially in recent days, but as political advertising, it was priceless stuff for Labor on the eve of an election.

Descriptions such as “Our first female Prime Minister” (the “our”, rather than, say, “Australia’s” is critical) emblazoned authoritatively across the cover of an institution such as Women’s Weekly are a great way to reinforce Gillard’s bid to shape her Prime Ministerial persona as an embodiment of Australian values.

According to Morgan, at least one women’s magazine is read by 27.5% of the population, meaning this glowing coverage is reaching a mass audience.

Morgan looked at where readership is concentrated, with some substantial differences. Rather than by income, readership appears related, at least partly, to distance from the CBD.  The electorates with the lowest readership of women’s magazines are inner-suburban electorates such as North Sydney, Bradfield, Grayndler in Sydney and Melbourne, Batman and Wills in Melbourne. But outer-suburban and some regional  seats have much higher levels.

The seat of Richmond has the highest readership, with just over 40%; McPherson next door is close, with 37%, suggesting retirees are a prime component of the readership.  In fact there are a string of Queensland marginals that all have high rates of readership — Bonner and Dawson, at 32%, Herbert at nearly 32%; the NSW North Coast electorate of Page, another marginal, is also about 32%.

According to Morgan data collected over the last two years, women’s magazine readers support Labor at the same rate as everyone else, but support the Coalition at a higher level than everyone else – the L-NP vote over the last two years averaged 36.7% among all voters, but 39% among magazine readers (compared, also, to 36.3% among all women).

This means all this glowing material about Julia Gillard is, from Labor’s point of view, not being wasted on existing Labor or Green voters but being aimed directly at potential converts to the Gillard camp. Particularly, one assumes, among older voters – especially given the “values” based pitch Gillard has deliberately made since becoming PM.

The most recent Morgan Poll taken on July 10/11 had a 3.5 point primary vote lead to Labor among women — almost the reverse of the 37-41% deficit among men.