Aspirational voters?

Writing a paper on self-employment and politics and have been through the Australian Election Studies 1966-2004 (accessed from ASSDA), and broken the left vote (= Labor, Greens & Democrats in the Representatives) down by employment type: self-employed, private sector, government and farm/family business.

	Self	Private	Government	Family/Farm
1996	25 (n=287)	49(n=761)	57 (n=351)	22 (n=72)
1998	34(n=309)	49 (n=759)	55 (n=403)	34 (n=47)
2001	36 (n=296)	48 (n=856)	58 (n=394)	33 (n=73)
2004	29 (n=261)	46 (n=742)	60 (n=440)	30 (n=50)

By occupation:

	Professional	Clerical	Trade	Unskilled
1996	44 (n=640)	44 (n=207)	42(n=382)	55 (n=206)
1998	40 (n=618)	55 (n=177)	51 (n=436)	53 (n=234)
2001	45 (n=702)	48 (n=158)	46 (n=448)	58 (n=249)
2004	45 (n=738)	49 (n=118)	48 (n=409)	50 (n=191)

Cross-classifications have small sample sizes, but interesting to see that the left shift among professionals since 1996 has been entirely among government (and perhaps self-employed) professionals, private sector professionals have moved to the right. The number of self-employed tradespeople is small but since 1996 Labor has made up ground. Labor's 2004 problem was less with aspirationals than its heartland.