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.