Democratic institutions and norms are under threat across established, high income democracies. While this varies based on individual country circumstances, all rich democracies face a combination of country-specific and common pressures. Public attitudes, and in particular support for and confidence in democratic institutions, are both an indicator of and potential causal factor explaining democratic decline and pressure. Demographic factors – including age/generation, gender, race/ethnicity, and education – have been used to explain these trends, both in Australia and abroad. However, sitting across many of the explanations for attitudinal trends is the profound way in which perceived economic and social disadvantage shape, and are shaped by political attitudes and behaviour. The aim of this paper is to explore what the latest data can tell us about these complex relationships in the present moment in Australia, focusing on the link in the direction of economic and social disadvantage shaping democratic attitudes and participation. The paper is structured in five parts: 1) Introducing the framework of democratic resilience and its relationship to economic and social disadvantage 2) Documenting the most salient trends in disadvantage 3) A detailed description of who considers themselves disadvantaged and how that relates to other objective indicators 4) The empirical link between these measures of disadvantage and political attitudes and behaviour and 6) A short reflection on the implications, as well as potential causal links in the opposite direction.
