Why is John Howard popular with younger voters?

There have been quite a few images in the Australian media recently of John Howard being accosted by enthusiatic young supporters. Matt Price has noted the PM's recent popularity too.

Does polling confirm this general impression of popularity with youth? A recent Newspoll showing demographic breakdown over the last couple of years pretty much does. To get to it, go here and look for the link to 23/06/06 "Geographic and Demographic Analysis..."

The interesting thing is that while Howard is clearly most popular with the over 50 demographic, his satisfaction rating is sometimes higher with the 18-34 year olds than the 35 - 49 year set. Dissatisfaction with Howard is sometimes higher in the "middle age" bracket too. There's often not a great deal in it, though.

The Newspoll survey shows that voting intention in the 18-34 yr olds is usually pretty evenly split between Lib/Nationals and Labor, with usually only one or two percent higher on the Labor side. (Of course, perhaps the younger crowd tend to favour the Greens too, so preferences from them may help Labor.)

So it would seem that it is certainly not the case that you can argue that on voting intentions, the younger ages are strongly conservative. (Perhaps they are more conservative now than in previous decades; I don't know.) Yet their satisfaction with Howard is quite high. (And unfortunately for Kim Beazley, they are often more dissatisfied with him than satisfied.)

Sometimes a degree of "dagginess" mysteriously reaches a certain level of "cool" amongst the young. (Rolf Harris seems a good example of this in the entertainment field.) I think that is part of Howard's current appeal to the young, mixed with admiration for his clear enthusiasm for the job, and the high degree of resilience he displays (this being a character trait that receives a lot of attention in child development circles now).

I have also always felt that he is a genuinely modest man, who (I like to imagine) has to pinch himself often to be sure he isn't dreaming while being received on the international stage. (He is still capable of appearing not entirely at ease, but I find that oddly endearing.) I presume that others share this view, even if they don't agree with all of his policies.

UPDATE: Janet Albrechtsen gives her view of Howard's popularity today, and it's hard to disagree with her.