POLITICAL campaigning towards certain demographics in the community is vitally important, Charles Sturt University's (CSU) Dominic O'Sullivan says.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
With the federal election this Saturday, candidates for the Parkes electorate are campaigning hard to attract final votes.
CSU political science Associate Professor O'Sullivan said strategies would be in place to target the 17.7 per cent of voters in Parkes who are aged 70 years or older.
"The population is ageing in rural seats, like Calare and Parkes, more than in urban seats so obviously candidates in those seats will be mindful of that," he said.
Read also:
"A big part of the Coalition's campaign is targeted towards older people who might be affected by the Labor Party's policy to remove franking credits for people in receipt of pensions from superannuation funds."
Assoc Prof O'Sullivan said, generally speaking, older people were more likely to be engaged in party politics or to attend candidates' forums.
However, he said there were other large demographic sectors in Parkes that would be looking for policies that appealed to them.
"Climate change seems to be an issue that is important for people across age groups, but perhaps a little bit more so for younger people," Assoc Prof O'Sullivan said.
"Younger people tend to engage more with social media, for example, and perhaps more so on specific issues rather than with political parties."
He said Labor's childcare policy would be very appealing to people with young children.
The drought was the "single most most important issue for people in parts of those electorates" and he said the right policy would attract voters.
Parkes might traditionally be a Nationals stronghold, but Assoc Prof O'Sullivan predicted the party might not win so convincingly at this election.
"I think in terms of Parkes and Calare, it's likely the Nationals candidates will prevail, but with a swing against them," he said.
"Both those seats overlap with seats that were won by the Shooters and Fishers Party at the NSW state election.
"Although the Nationals retained the seat of Dubbo in the state election, there was a very, very significant swing against the National Party there."
Assoc Prof O'Sullivan said he expected Labor to win the federal election but there were "some very interesting seats that are a bit difficult to predict".