Female voters deserted the Coalition in 2022. Have they returned?

Three years on, a new ACM survey of voter sentiment reveals it has failed to solve the problem, with just 23 per cent of women based in regional Australia indicating they would vote for the Liberal Party and 9pc for the Nationals as their first preference on May 3.

The results mirror those from 2022 when the Coalition received its lowest-ever share of female support with just 32pc of the vote, as professionals turned to Teals and outer-urban and regional women to minor parties and Independents.

Analysts believe the swing, along with the growing number of young voters who tend to favour left-of-centre parties, cost it any chance of winning that election.

The results belie polling that had shown a bump in female support over the last year, with an optimistic Liberal Party releasing its own research showing primary support had jumped from 34pc in December 2022 to 42pc in early 2025.

But then disaster struck in early March when shadow finance minister Jane Hume revealed that the Coalition intended to dismantle work-from-home provisions for federal public servants.

It was less a campaign misstep than a wrecking ball with Minister for Women Katy Gallagher saying the policy would disadvantage women and families, and female voters agreed as Coalition support in the cohort again collapsed.

In an issues-based election campaign, it is worth recalling that specific topics can flip plebiscites, such as the Goods and Services Tax in 1998 and WorkChoices in 2006.

Meanwhile, the ACM survey showed that outside the major parties, 17pc of female respondents had decided to vote for an Independent, 6pc for the Greens, and 3pc for another party, indicating low support for both Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots and Pauline Hanson's One Nation, while only 13pc remained undecided.

It also found female voters are much more positive about Opposition leader Peter Dutton than his extremely unpopular predecessor Scott Morrison, however, just 32pc suggested he was their preferred leader, compared to 35pc for Anthony Albanese, while a third wished there was another option.

The Labor Party has little more to celebrate, however, with its primary support slipping among regional women from 32pc to 25pc across the two polls.

More than two-thirds of respondents to the most recent poll also suggested the Coalition's election promises were more appealing than the government's.

The most popular Coalition policies are 37pc of respondents behind its pledge to force energy exporters to divert more gas to the Australian market, 35pc in favour of a temporary cut in the fuel excise and 25pc backing its nuclear power plant plans.

However, 62pc of women and 61pc of men surveyed believe the major parties have "forgotten" rural and regional Australia.

As Donald Trump's shadow continues to loom large over the election, 34pc of respondents believe Mr Dutton could better manage the US president against 30pc for Mr Albanese.

The geopolitical issues created by the US administration and the sudden fragility of international relationships may be behind 69pc of women and 75pc of men wanting more defence investment to strengthen Australia's independence.

While women's rights and gender equality remain important issues, both campaigns have so far been quiet on a growing national domestic violence problem.

The survey results also show the Coalition's fortunes have not improved since another ACM survey last month showed 25pc of the 3275 female voters surveyed intended to vote Liberal and 7pc for the Nationals.

Meanwhile, 32pc of male respondents said they will vote for the Liberal Party and 10pc for the Nationals.

The generational angle is also crucial this time around with the 2025 federal election to be the first in which Millennials and Gen Z together will outnumber Baby Boomers as the dominant voting bloc in Australia.

By late 2021, then-Nationals deputy leader David Littleproud was seeing that gender had become a political problem for the Coalition.

"Women had lost faith in us. Six, 12 months before the election ... I think women had stopped listening," he said.

ACM-Agri asked Mr Littleproud last week whether he believed that female voters would return to the Coalition this election, particularly after the WFH blunder and, in a cost-of-living campaign he pointed to a $20 billion plebiscite pledge.

"I was extremely proud to launch the Regional Australia Future Fund," he said.

"This fund will deliver a guaranteed funding stream in perpetuity for regional, rural and remote Australia.

"Key priority areas include growing the regional health workforce, so families can access local and affordable health care, as well as flexible childcare solutions for families.

"Our regional female voters deserve more. The Coalition will ensure they get the proper funding and services they deserve."

A Liberal MP told this masthead that while its issues with females are still being worked through, "it helps coming into the 2025 election without Scott Morrison as leader".

The Morrison government dealt with scandals around the treatment of women within Parliament House, including former staffer Brittney Higgins' sexual assault allegation, which sparked a series of protests around the country.

However, it has also struggled to make progress on candidate gender imbalances.

Following the 2022 defeat, Senator Hume co-authored a dissection of the result that found the Liberal Party was "failing to adequately represent the values and priorities of women in modern Australia," and there was a culture within the party that did not encourage women into leadership roles.

It also recommended that half of future Coalition election candidates be women and 50pc of the party in parliament by 2032.

It currently has only 11 female MPs in the House of Representatives, or 20pc of its total, and 14 Senators, or 45pc overall total in the upper house.

However, an Australian National University report found just a three per cent improvement with 32pc of 2025 contenders being female - with most of those in marginal or unwinnable divisions.

Senior Liberal MPS Karen Andrews and Nola Marino have also announced their retirements but were replaced by male candidates.

RedBridge director Kos Samaras said its polling shows the Coalition's primary vote has fallen 7pc since the election was called and the parties were neck-and-neck.

He said a key reason for a spike in support for Labor was its specific targeting of women voters.

"It's coming from their base, which they lost over the last 18 months, so it's largely women in the outer suburbs and regions, no question, and that's a deliberate strategy," he said.

"It's abundantly clear that only one side had completed the required research to build a strategy that works. In today's electoral landscape, a major party can falter by losing too many of its core voters to minor parties."

He said the political game being played in 2025 was endeavouring to hold your own base while "provoking defections from your opponent".

University of NSW gender equality expert Dr Sue Williamson said the Coalition's opposition to federal public servants working from home "would have been very concerning to many people, not just women, but families, that it could also flow on to other sectors".

"We've been seeing this for the past few years; if we go back to when Tony Abbott made a comment about housewives doing their ironing, that really put women offside, and then there was Scott Morrison, who made a series of gaffes when it came to gender issues," she said.

The previous nationwide survey of ACM-Agri readers last month found that farm and economic policies are the hot-button issues that could still sway votes.