With Prime Minister Gillard’s credibility currently under fire, Tony Abbott calling for an early election, and other elements within parliament casting an uncertain cloud over Australia’s immediate political future, we are left wondering: just what will happen when this country next goes to the polls, and how will our fate be decided?

To illustrate just how this might go down on a local level, I have here an in-depth analysis of the state of play in Victorian electoral politics by my very good friend, the philosopher Patrick Stokes.

“There are essentially four key demographics in Victoria: People Who Drive To Harvey Norman Each Saturday, People Who Walk Big Dogs On Brighton Beach Early Sunday Morning, People Who Eat Breakfast In Inner-City Cafes, and Angry Rural People.

The ALP has always assumed the Breakfast Eaters are rusted on (hence their angst over the Greens, and over an emerging younger generation of progressive voters who have *never* voted Labor), and the Libs have made the same assumption about the Dog Walkers (successfully, so far). The Angry Rural People are reflexively conservative but will vote ALP when they think the Lib/Nats aren’t doing enough for them. (Of course, we spend more per head on health and education in the regional centres and a LOT more per head in the bush than we do in the city, but country people insist they’re always getting a raw deal).

That leaves the Harvey Norman crowd (and I should admit that though I’m a Breakfast Eater I do like a good Harvey Norman and go nuts for Dick Smith Electronics), who basically decide every election. As a result they’ve had both levels of government telling them how right they are about everything for at least 15 years:

“Of course you can still have huge houses in a city undergoing massive population growth!”

“Of course you can have cheap electricity and water and yet demand that we fight climate change at the same time!”

“Of course you can have endlessly rising house values (look what your place is worth now! You’re rich I tells ya, rich!) without your kids finding themselves priced out of the housing market!”

“Of course your vague sense that asylum seekers are somehow bad justifies locking vulnerable people up in offshore prisons!”

“Of course you can choose to live in Melton or Pakenham and have exactly the same services and facilities as someone living in the inner suburbs!”

“Of course it’s ok to only give a shit about yourself: you’re not self-centred, you’re ‘aspirational’!”

Trying to please this demographic is a graveyard for governments of both stripes; and as a result nothing ever changes. Pass those organic fair-trade hash browns, would you?”

Dr Patrick Stokes is currently a Marie Curie Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, a comedy writer-performer, and displaced Melbournian.  Follow him on Twitter: @patstokes