J.D. Vance – a powerful symbol of white working-class America – has been nominated as the vice president of Donald Trump’s campaign. At the same time, Coalition leader Peter Dutton edged ahead of Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister in the Resolve opinion poll. These events are part of a trend that has swept liberal democracies around the world, in which working-class voters are turning increasingly to conservative parties.

Australia’s political system, with compulsory, preferential voting, ensures that a local Trump or Marine Le Pen are unlikely to enter the Lodge. But if Australian working-class voters are increasingly leaning right, what could happen?

Campaigning for workers’ votes: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his nomination for vice president, Senator J.D. Vance.Credit: AP

The Australian National University has been conducting the most comprehensive study of voters’ attitudes, the Australian Election Study, since 1987. The latest one showed that 38 per cent of the working class voted Labor in 2022, down from 60 per cent in 1987. (Class was self-described.) Some of those votes have gone to the Greens. But the Coalition sees this as a disaffected constituency which is now up for grabs. Cue more visuals of Peter Dutton, in reality a millionaire property owner, in hi-vis and a hard hat.

As Australian society becomes more polarised, it is harder to discuss the issue of class. With academics, journalists and politicians becoming increasingly university educated and middle-class, judgment and criticism are edging out objective analysis. A judgmental, left-elite perspective might ask: Why do working-class people vote against their own interests? Don’t they know what’s good for........

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