Democrats vs demographics

Australian Democrats. They're pro-choice and they vote. And so do all their surviving children.

In theory, the ranks of Don's Party should by now be bursting with the millions of small-L moderates driven out of the Liberal Party by the far Right wing's harsh, unrepresentative social conservatism. In practice, though, I know of exactly one - Greg Barns, formerly a Howard Government Ministerial staffer (I still have the letter, signed by him, from ten years ago assuring me that my opposition to the privatisation of Telstra was groundless), who quit the Libs and deed-polled his name to Don John Woodchipp. Without those reinforcements, the number of dreadfully earnest, well-meaning schoolteachers who deeply believe that [1] "the Coalition is too patriarchal but Labor is too blokey", and [2] using the words "toys" and "boys" in the same sentence is only problematic if the word "war" is in there too, just ain't sufficient to reach the Senate quota.

Admittedly, at the same election the Greens' vote held up, although that's doubtless because the Greens are more consistently pro-choice in defending the reproductive autonomy of the individual.