The power of the Muslim vote

Despite Australia’s geographic distance from the world, global events, brought into our daily life through social media and emergent technology shape our lives and politics more than ever before. The October 7 terrorist attack and subsequent war in Gaza and the rapid and disturbing increase in antisemitism have become a key element of Australian domestic politics and a significant electoral issue,  

A powerful combination of religion, demography, and the Gaza conflict is playing a significant symbolic role in a handful of key marginal seats.. 

With Senator Fatima Payman’s dramatic defection from Labor to form the ‘Australia’s Voice’ party, the emergence of narrowly focused interest groups such as ‘Muslim Votes Matter’ and The Muslim Vote’ campaign, and a raft of independent Muslim candidates standing in Western Sydney and parts of Melbourne, Muslim Australians have been politicised as a bloc, laying the groundwork for a more decisive role for religion in Australian politics. 

Australia’s diverse Muslim populations have grown exponentially since the turn of the century, now comprising 3.2% of the national population, up from 1.5% in 2001. In some Federal electorates, the figure, according to the most recent census is far higher, at 32 per cent in the Western Sydney seat of Blaxland and 23 per cent in neighbouring Watson. In Calwell in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, 18 per cent of the electorate are Muslim – and the proportion of Muslims in these seats has probably increased since the 2021 census. 

The seats with the highest Jewish populations have lower proportions of Jewish voters: 16% in the Sydney eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth  and 12% in the Melbourne south-eastern seat of Macnamara. 

The Muslim vote has a strong generational element. Many families have lived in Australia for several generations, evolving from working class migrants into a reasonably prosperous middle class who own their own homes. 

The older generation of first-generation migrants and recent migrants largely focussed on building a better life for their families and traditionally voted for the major parties, mainly Labor.  

Australian born Muslims are more likely to take a strong interest in politics, very often through an Islamic lens. This is part of a global trend in which Islam becomes a primary identity marker for locally-born Muslims. 

A cohort of professional, Australian-born or raised Muslim elites  is increasingly organising political campaigns grounded in Islamic identity. Two advocacy interest groups, ‘Muslim Votes Matter’ and ‘The Muslim Vote’ have launched coordinated efforts to pressure Labor in these seats, sometimes backing Greens or independents. The aim is disruption of the two-party monopoly and to amplify the voice of (some) Australian Muslims in the political life of the nation, including its foreign policy.  

These efforts remain fragmented, driven more by grievance over Gaza and a perception of exclusion, often framed as ‘Islamophobia’, than a cohesive policy platform.  

The Greens, who have shed any illusions about gaining real political power under leader Adam Bandt, have strongly courted the Muslim Vote in an attempt to build an alliance targeting the major political parties. While the Greens have attempted to court Muslim voters with their pro-Palestinian stance, tensions remain. Muslim Votes Matter has objected to the Greens’ position on religious freedoms in schools, particularly around hiring based on sexuality, but nonetheless plans to support Greens in multiple seats. 

In Victoria, media reports indicate that the Greens have secured endorsements from Muslim advocacy groups in Wills and Bruce; in Queensland, in Moreton; in South Australia, in Sturt; and in Western Sydney’s Blaxland and Watson, Muslim groups have backed independents against Labor ministers Jason Clare and Tony Burke​ despite their outspoken support for Palestine. This indicates that the aims of Muslim advocacy groups are more disruptive than pragmatic and principled, seeking to carve space for a larger political movement.  

For Jewish voters, tensions of religion, demography, and politics are highly evident in Macnamara. the electorate with Australia’s second-largest Jewish population. Burns has expressed concern that if enough disillusioned Jewish voters shift to the Liberals and Labor finishes third in the count, the unintended result could be a Greens win.  

There is an analogous fight i n the seat of Wills in northern Melbourne, with a significant Muslim community, Labor’s Peter Khalil faces a well-organised campaign from Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam, supported by ‘Muslim Votes Matter’ and ‘Vote Palestine Wills’ grassroots campaign. The redistribution of the Greens stronghold of Brunswick into Wills has further narrowed Khalil’s margin down to 4.6%, making well within the reach of the Greens. Here, Gaza does appear to be shifting votes, although both major candidates agree the top issue is still cost of living​. 

In Blaxland and Watson, both long-time Western Sydney Labor strongholds, independents Ziad Basyouny and Ahmed Ouf are challenging senior Labor figures with the backing of Muslim campaign groups. Labor incumbents Burke and Clare, both of whom are career politicians, each hold their seats on over 50 per cent of the primary vote. However, their support is being tested by grassroots anger over Gaza, perceived government inaction, and a broader sense among Muslim constituents of being politically ignored​​ and taken for granted.  

Despite this challenge, polling suggests that for either candidate to succeed, Labor would need to lose 15 to 20 per cent of its primary vote. A result of such magnitude in Western Sydney would be historic and made even harder by the allocation of Liberal preferences to Labor over these independent candidates, signalling that in a very small sense, that the major parties are prepared to cooperate to blunt this new threat to their power.  

We are entering a new era. Religion is no longer a background demographic feature; it is becoming, despite Australia’s long history of secularism, a key element of strategy in the contemporary political landscape.  

In this election, religion and matters of faith will, for most Australians, including Muslims, play a secondary role. Other concerns, anxieties and grievances including the cost of living and housing affordability will be critical..  

But international models foreshadow the potential impact of the Muslim vote. In the United Kingdom four independents who made the Gaza issue central to their platform were elected in the 2024 election.  

Mobilisation based on religious identity is likely to increase and become a more prominent feature of Australian political life, presenting challenges to social cohesion.