Commentators were falling over themselves yesterday to predict “20 years of Labor” after the Liberals chose Tony Abbott over the more marketable Malcolm Turnbull or Joe Hockey. Those predictions are in no small part based on Abbott’s checkered relationship with the female vote.

The average coalition primary vote for the past four quarterly Newspolls paints a lop-sided picture, with coalition support from women aged 18-24 at a measly 28.3%. For women 25-34 it’s 30.9%; for women 35-49, 34.3%; and for women 50-plus, 42.6%.

In contrast, Labor polls above 40 in each category.

The Liberal vote among women is down from 43% in the 2007 election to 37.9 now. This is in comparison to Labor, which polled 41 at the 2007 election, but had risen dramatically to 45.4% in the same demographic currently.

There are echoes here of the experience in the US, where the Democrats used their significant advantage among women voters to secure the 2008 election victory. In fact, the Democratic advantage among young female voters has almost doubled since 2004. According to PewResearch, four years ago more than half of women under the age of 30 were identified as Democrats. Today they a hold 35-point advantage with more than six-in-10 women in this age group calling themselves Democrats.

Labor is on its way to establishing a similar advantage among women in Australia. This is going to hurt the coalition particularly in outer suburban housing estates where higher concentrations of young women live with their children.

Although women are significantly under-represented on the political stage (and the upper echelons of business), Abbott’s advisers will be only too aware of the problems they face with the female half of the vote. The Turnbull experiment is over, but Abbott’s aggressive approach will do little to sway the female vote at the next election, looking increasingly like a double dissolution early next year.

There will never be a better opportunity for Labor to exploit this weakness. When Kerry O’Brien asked Abbott last night on the 7.30 Report about the crucial female bloc (his problematic area) he said: “I’m not going to try and pull the wool over women’s eyes … or anyone’s … people will see different aspects of my personality and make up their minds themselves.” Even this response will irk some —  i.e. “women will like me when they see more of me.” And this is the problem — Abbott describes himself as a “conviction” politician, but a significant number of women only see an arrogant hardliner.

This has been evidenced time and again — most notably in proposals such as a return to at-fault divorce, his position on the abortion pill RU-486 and his swearing at female Labor MPs Nicola Roxon and Julia Gillard. Add this to his stance on the seismic issue of climate change and it’s not surprising that young women are loath to support him.

Morgan polling and Possum’s analysis on global warming shows a gender polarisation on the CPRS, too — although there was a 6% drop in the proportion of men that wanted action in November, the number of women sceptical of global warming did not change over the period.

According to a new study from the United Nations, women are more likely to take action to address wider environmental issues than men, too.

The election of Abbott is not only likely to result in a CPRS being passed, which is less favourable to Liberals’ core constituents in business, it is also likely to speed up the current trend of women voting Labor — once they are gone they will be very hard to get back.