Australian Election Research Articles

Using Numerical Anomalies to Test for Fraud in Colonial New South Wales Elections

When fabricating numbers, humans tend to make systematic errors, favouring some numerals over others. Analysing twenty‐first‐century elections in which fraud has been alleged, researchers have observed anomalous patterns in the last digits of vote counts. I show that vote counts for the 2022 Australian election exhibit no anomalies, and then turn attention to nineteenth‐century colonial elections in New South Wales. Pooling data for elections from 1843 to 1887, I find a less uniform pattern in final digits. Even so, formal statistical tests cannot reject the hypothesis that vote counts in these elections were unaffected by fraud.

Political crisis and social trust: the case of Australia

ABSTRACT Trust in Australian political institutions has declined markedly since 2007. Trust scholars and social capital theorists argue that institutional trust affects social trust, which implies that declining trust in political institutions should also reduce social trust. However, using data from the Australian Election Study, World Values Survey and HILDA panel study, I find no evidence of any aggregate-level decline in Australian social trust since 2007. While this could be a result of the ‘coup era’ in Australian politics from 2010 to 2018, a better explanation is that social trust remained high because permanent changes in trust occur primarily among younger people. A long-term decline through generational replacement therefore remains possible. This challenges both social capital theory and institutional theories of social trust, but would explain the experiences of other advanced democracies during episodes of political crisis, including New Zealand, Greece, Finland, Japan, Sweden, Spain and the United States.

Zmiany systemu wyborczego w Austrii – ocena konsekwencji politycznych

The analysis developed in this paper addresses the changes that took place over the years in the Austrian election and parliamentary scene following the succession of changes in the election law. The paper discusses the amendments to the National Council Election Regulation that came into force in 1970, 1992, and 2007. Using qualitative and quantitative parameters, it shows the transformations the federal party system was subjected to, exploring the political consequences of the voting system change. The paper focuses on assessing the changes that occurred in the election and parliamentary scene after 2007, when 16-year-olds were granted voting rights and postal voting was introduced. The reflections presented in this paper aim to provide an insight into whether amending the National Council Election Regulation put a stop to the falling voter turnout, gauge what the election participation of the youngest electorate was, identify what political decisions teenage voters made and examine what changed in the Austrian party system.

Distributive politics and electoral advantage in the 2022 Australian election

AbstractDistributive politics—or pork barreling—is prevalent across many political systems. It aims to influence the vote by directing discretionary spending to constituencies and/or groups of voters that are important for their re‐election. We term this the objective dimension to pork barreling. However, we argue that for pork barreling to deliver rewards, voters must also be aware that they are gaining a special benefit from government—the subjective dimension. Using a unique Australian dataset that matches spending on electoral areas with a large scale national survey that asked voters if their area had received special benefits, we clarify the mechanisms behind pork barreling. Our results show that about one in five voters believed that their electorate had received additional benefits. Objectively, spending was disproportionately directed to government‐held seats. Despite this largesse, we find that pork barreling had little or no effect on the vote in the 2022 Australian election.

Party explanations for the 2022 Australian election result

ABSTRACT Post-election reviews provide an opportunity for political parties to diagnose the reasons for their success or failure. Since 2019, the reviews conducted by the Australian Labor and Liberal parties have been made public, and they provide an ideal opportunity to test their explanations against the evidence. This paper identifies six explanations for the 2022 Australian federal election outcome and tests them using the 2022 Australian Election Study survey. Both reviews correctly identify the importance of leadership and the pandemic in shaping the election result but underplay the importance of independents and of climate change. Both reviews over-estimate changes in voting among women and immigrants. Overall, the reviews are only partially accurate in explaining the election result.

The Coup Capital of the Democratic World? Voters and Prime Ministerial Change in Australia

Between 2010 and 2018, Australia saw four sitting prime ministers deposed by their own parties, giving the country the title “the coup capital of the democratic world”. In this paper, we use Australian Election Study surveys and commercial opinion poll data to analyse what voters thought of these changes and whether they lifted the electoral fortunes of their respective parties. The results suggest that voters' views of the changes depended on the popularity of the leader in question, but that a desire to see better economic performance reinforced support for a change in prime minister. There is little evidence that opinion polls played a role in any of the changes, at least for voters. There is also no evidence that the changes improved the subsequent vote for each of the parties that changed a prime minister; indeed, in three of the four cases the party vote declined significantly following the change.

Exposure to Campaign and Partisan Voting: The Moderating Roles of Voters' Political Predispositions

How do partisan citizens respond to campaign information and make voting decisions? We theorise that the association between exposure to campaign information and partisan voting is moderated by citizens' political predispositions — strength of partisanship, political sophistication, and election interest. To test our expectations, we used Australian Election Studies data from 2013, 2016, and 2019. We found that partisans who are exposed to campaign information tend to follow their party preference when strength of partisanship is high. For political sophistication, we found that the influence of campaign information on partisan voting is not conditional on sophistication. For election interest, we found a moderating effect of election interest whereby partisan individuals who encountered campaign information were more inclined to choose their own party when interest was low and more inclined to support their opposing party when interest was high.

Does religion remain an influence on political participation in an increasingly secular society? An empirical investigation of the Australian case

ABSTRACT A substantial body of literature has found that religion is related to an individual’s political participation. However, rates of religious affiliation and religious attendance have dropped considerably over the last three decades in some countries. This article explores this development by investigating the following question: does religion still remain an important factor in influencing the rate of political participation in societies that have become more secular than ever? Using data based on the Australian Election Study of 2019, the findings reveal that the effect of religion on political participation is definitely not waning in Australian society which is gradually becoming more secular. Religious attendance continues to be significantly and positively associated with political participation while religious affiliation is not. The study further indicates that religious attendance moderates the association between religious affiliation and political participation. The findings suggest that religion, particularly religious attendance, remains a key driver for political participation among religious individuals in increasingly secular societies.

Why British Conservatives Should be Worried About the Australian Election Results

Why British Conservatives Should be Worried About the Australian Election Results

Gene-edited tomatoes, South Asian heatwave and Australian election

Gene-edited tomatoes, South Asian heatwave and Australian election

Sexism and Attitudes Toward Policy Spending in Australia and the United States

Sexist attitudes influence a wide range of political behaviors, including support for explicitly gendered policies like gender quotas. But we know much less about how sexism might broadly shape policy preferences. We argue that some policy domains are implicitly associated with being pro-women or pro-men because of gender socialization, gender segregation in the workforce, and differences in policy preferences in the general population and among political elites. As (hostile) sexists view women as inherently undeserving, making illegitimate claims on government, and getting ahead at the expense of men, we hypothesize that they will oppose policies associated with women, while supporting “male” policies such as defense and law enforcement. We test our hypothesis using the 2019 Australian Election Study and 2018 US Cooperative Congressional Study. We find similar patterns of policy preferences, wherein those holding sexist attitudes (net of other attitudes and demographic characteristics) want to cut funding for pro-women policies like social services, education, and health, while they approve of increased funding for law enforcement and defense.

China really is impacting Australian elections (and has been for some time)

China really is impacting Australian elections (and has been for some time)

Political Performance and Political Trust in Australia

While political trust has declined in Australia, reaching its lowest level ever recorded in 2019, there remain very few studies on what explains the variation in political trust and therefore what leads to such change in political trust is less certain in Australia. This paper examines the role of political performance, grounded in the valence model of electoral support, in shaping the political trust of citizens in Australia, using Australian Election Study data from 2001 to 2019. Political performance is measured by economic performance, partisanship, leadership image, political satisfaction, and leadership change, based on the valence model of electoral support. The results demonstrate that economic performance, leadership image, and political satisfaction have contributed to a change in the level of political trust in Australia, whereas partisanship and leadership change have not been significantly associated with variation in political trust.

The impact of intergroup contact on attitudes towards immigrants: a case study of Australia

ABSTRACT As global efforts to address COVID-19 become more urgent, the public discourse on attitudes towards immigrants has also become more polarized. In such a heightened social and political context, we study the impact of intergroup contact in political jurisdictions with different shares of minority populations. Drawing on data from the Australian Election Study and the Census, we find that less intergroup contact with neighbours from minority birthplace, language and citizenship backgrounds is correlated with higher anti-immigrant sentiments. These results have significant implications for immigrant-receiving countries with existing legislation and policies that direct immigrants to move to areas of lower population density, lower presence of immigrants, and less previous exposure to international migration. The evidence presented in this study suggests that without sufficient political and policy sensitization to the issues for immigrants living in these areas, there could be detrimental social and political impacts to both immigrants and society more generally.

Foreign interference and Australian electoral security in the digital era

ABSTRACT Australian elections are digitising. Electronic ballots, electronic certified lists, electronic scrutiny, and electronic data are becoming part of the electoral status quo. The digitisation of elections in Australia induces new vulnerabilities that malign foreign entities can exploit to subvert the nation’s democratic sovereignty. Problems such as inauthenticity, data insecurity, and disinformation are amplified in today’s epoch of digital era governance. Since these problems have the potential to erode the legitimacy of Australian elections, it is imperative to deepen understanding of these risks to optimise the nation’s democratic resilience. Through applying a conceptual framework derived from democratic theory and public policy, this paper assesses the vulnerability of Australia’s elections to foreign interference based on the Australian electoral system irrespective of adversary capabilities. It finds that Australia’s federal elections are relatively secure from hard cyber security risks due to digital-analogue hybridity in electoral processes, but they are vulnerable to soft cyber risks such as digital disinformation.

Four Paths To Misperceptions: A Panel Study On Resistance Against Journalistic Evidence

ABSTRACT Citizens’ misperceptions on critical issues such as climate change, migration, or health are viewed as a major problem in today’s democratic systems. A large body of literature shows how inaccurate information might lead to misperceptions despite of corrections and retractions. This study highlights individuals’ acts of resistance against journalistic reporting as a driver of misperceptions. Based on the framework of resistance strategies, we examine four processes which enable individuals to arrive at political realities that differ from the facts that are reported in the legacy media: 1) avoidance of the evidence; 2) biased evaluation of journalists’ expert opinion as a form of biased processing; 3) contesting the content and source of evidence; and 4) bolstering attitudes by seeking out like-minded discussions. We apply this theoretical model to explain misperceptions on the political “Ibiza scandal” and misperceptions about climate change policies in Austria. Findings from a two-wave panel study in the Austrian election context (N = 523) suggest that misperceptions stem in part from wrong inferences about journalistic expert opinion. Moreover, individuals that engage in source derogation of legacy media are able to uphold their misperceptions in the face of opposing evidence.

Sexism and the Australian voter: how sexist attitudes influenced vote choice in the 2019 federal election

ABSTRACT While attitudes toward women and gender equality are increasingly salient in Australian politics, little is known about how sexist attitudes shape political behaviour. Using the Australian Election Study, I assess the extent hostile sexism is present among Australian citizens and influenced vote choice in the 2019 Federal election. First, I find that women are less likely than men to hold hostile sexist attitudes, but gender differences vary by party identification. Second, I show that hostile sexism is not significantly related to the likelihood of voting for the Labor or Liberal parties. Hostile sexist attitudes, however, significantly increase the likelihood of voting for the National party and significantly decrease the likelihood of voting for the Greens. Finally, I find no gender difference in the role of hostile sexism in explaining vote choice.

Explaining the decline of political trust in Australia

ABSTRACT In most established democracies, trends in political trust in recent decades have fluctuated, but have not declined strongly. Citizens’ democratic attitudes in many countries have even proven to be resilient in the face of the Great Recession. Such trends contrast sharply with the observation of a gradual and continued decline of Australian’s trust in politics since 2007. Using a combined file of seven Australian Election Study surveys, employing exactly comparable questions and methodologies, this paper tests two explanations – government performance and political detachment – to account for this remarkable decline. The findings show that both a lack of performance by successive governments and a broad detachment from politics matter. The findings suggest that there is no single explanation for the decline; rather, a diverse range of inter-related factors appear to be at work.

Pandemic Elections and the Covid-Safe Effect: Incumbents Re-elected in Six Covid-19 Safe Havens

The Antipodes have been amongst the safest places on the planet during the Covid-19 pandemic. The governments of Australia and New Zealand (national, state, and territory governments) have acted promptly, decisively, and cohesively in closing borders, quarantining incoming returnees, instigating rigorous contact tracing and extensive testing, social distancing, hand washing, masks, and occasional lockdowns. Antipodean governments and populations have long experience of awareness and compliance with biosecurity issues. Isolation and distance have long served to keep Australia and New Zealand free of many pests and diseases. Each Antipodean election held during the Covid-19 pandemic has returned the incumbent. During the first 14 months of the pandemic, six out of six incumbent governments facing elections during the Covid pandemic have been returned. Five returned incumbents were center-left while the sixth was center-right. Four of the elections have rewarded the incumbent government with an increased majority, the Northern Territory election returned a reduced majority, and the Tasmanian election returned the status quo with the narrowest of majorities maintained. The New Zealand election returned the Labor government to power in their own right and released them from the coalition. The Western Australian election saw Labor returned with a landslide result with an unprecedented, win of 53 out of 59 seats (90% of seats). The object of the present paper is to report the outcomes of the six antipodean elections conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic (to date) and to reflect on the Covid-safe effect on them if any.

Migrant Attitudes Towards Democracy in Australia: Excluded or Allegiant Citizens?

How do migrants evaluate democracy in Australia? While prior studies have examined migrant support for democracy in Australia, less is known about how migrants evaluate the performance of democracy, as captured by indicators on political trust and satisfaction with democracy. Would migrants have lower levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy as a result of political exclusion, including under‐representation in parliament? Or would migrants from less democratic countries, socialised in regimes where critical attitudes towards political authorities are discouraged, be more allegiant citizens with relatively positive evaluations of democracy? Using data from the 2010 to 2019 Australian Election Study surveys, combined with Freedom House regime classifications of migrant origin countries, we examine migrant attitudes towards Australian democracy. The results show that while migrants to Australia from other democratic countries have similar attitudes to those born in Australia, those from less democratic countries have higher levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy. This suggests that despite political exclusion, migrants from less democratic countries are more allegiant citizens than those born in Australia or another democracy.