papers:
  1. A shrinking Australian electoral roll?
    with Peter Brent
    We examine recent trends in electoral enrollment in Australia, which suggest that since the 2004 Federal election, enrollments have fallen as a share of the eligible population. Recent months have seen a marked increase in enrolment, but the disparity remains. We suggest some reasons as to why this has occured. Democratic Audit of Australia
    record last updated 10:31am June 20, 2007
  2. Pooling the Polls Over an Election Campaign
    Poll results vary over the course of a campaign election and across polling organisations, making it difficult to track genuine changes in voter support. I present a statistical model that tracks changes in voter support over time by pooling the polls, and corrects for variation across polling organisations due to biases known as ‘house effects’. The result is a less biased and more precise estimate of vote intentions than is possible from any one poll alone. I use five series of polls fielded over the 2004 Australian federal election campaign (ACNielsen, the ANU/ninemsn online poll, Galaxy, Newspoll, and Roy Morgan) to generate daily estimates of the Coalition’s share of two-party preferred (2PP) and first preference vote intentions. Over the course of the campaign there is about a 4 percentage point swing to the Coalition in first preference vote share (and a smaller swing in 2PP terms), that begins prior to the formal announcement of the election, but is complete shortly after the leader debates. The ANU/ninemsn online poll and Morgan are found to have large and statistically significant biases, while, generally, the three phone polls have small and/or statistically insignificant biases, with ACNielsen and (in particular) Galaxy performing quite well in 2004. Australian Journal of Political Science. 2005. V40(4): 499-517. Replication archive and technical appendix available below.
    Download: zip

    record last updated 5:33pm October 17, 2006
  3. Incumbency Advantage and Candidate Quality
    in Mortgage Nation: The 2004 Australian Election. Marian Simms and John Warhurst (eds). 2005. Perth, Western Australia: API Network/Curtin University of Technology. pp335-347.
    record last updated 3:03pm January 31, 2006
  4. Pooling and Smoothing the Polls Over an Election Campaign
    slides from a talk given at the Seminar in Bayesian Inference in Econometrics and Statistics, Washington University in St Louis, August 1, 2005
    Download: PDF

    record last updated 8:47am August 2, 2005
  5. Informal Voting in the 2004 Australian Election: a brief look at the aggregate data
    multiple regression analysis of rates of informality in the 2004 Australian House of Representatives election; divisional level data; key predictors are non-English speaking at home, ballot length (and the interaction of the two), along with tertiary education and an indicator for divisions in jurisdictions with optional preferential voting in their legislative elections.
    Download: pdf

    record last updated 3:54pm April 25, 2005
  6. Howard, Bush and Mandates: the 2004 U.S. and Australian Elections Compared
    Op-ed piece comparing the two conservative victories in the 2004 U.S. and Australian elections; submitted to Dissent (www.dissent.com.au)
    Download: PDF

    record last updated 6:53pm February 16, 2005
  7. Political Parties and Electoral Behaviour
    The Cambridge Handbook of the Social Sciences in Australia. 2002. pp266-286.
    record last updated 10:29pm November 12, 2004
  8. Compulsory Voting
    a contribution to the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Elsevier)
    record last updated 1:21pm December 1, 2004
  9. Estimating Ideological Locations in Australian Political Institutions
    Slides from a presentation to the Annual Meeting of the Australasian Political Studies Association, Brisbane, September 2001.
    Download: PDF

    record last updated 1:07pm December 1, 2004
  10. Non-Compulsory Voting in Australia?: what surveys can (and can't) tell us
    Electoral Studies. 1999. 18:29-48.
    record last updated 10:31pm November 12, 2004
  11. Pauline Hanson, the Mainstream, and Political Elites: the place of race in Australian political ideology.
    Australian Journal of Political Science. 1998. 33(2): 167-186.
    record last updated 1:20pm December 1, 2004
  12. Rats and Representation: Remedying the Colston Defect
    Current Affairs Bulletin V73(3, October/November): 23-26
    Download: PDF

    record last updated 1:14pm December 1, 2004
  13. Some More of All That: a Reply to Charnock
    Australian Journal of Political Science 30:347-55
    record last updated 1:15pm December 1, 2004
  14. Forecasting Australian Elections: 1993 And All That
    with Gary Marks
    Australian Journal of Political Science 29:277-91
    record last updated 1:20pm December 1, 2004
  15. Split Parties Finish Last: Preferences, Pluralities and the 1957 Queensland election
    Australian Journal of Political Science 27: 434-448
    record last updated 1:18pm December 1, 2004
data:
Vote and Seat Shares, by Party, Australian Federal Elections, House of Representatives and Senate, 1910-2001.
Excel workbook. Sources noted in workbook.
1996 Census data aggregated to 1998 electoral divisions.
ZIP archive, as generously supplied by Andrew Kopras and published in “Electorate Rankings: Census 1996.” Background Paper 14, 1997-98. Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia: Canberra.
1998 Federal Election Results, by House of Representatives Electoral Division, merged with 1996 Census data.
Sources detailed in Excel workbook. Also available as a Stata dta file.
2001 Federal election results, by House of Representatives Electoral Division, merged with Census data.
1996 and 2001 Census data, ggregated to 2000 Commonwealth electoral divisions (i.e., the division boundaries in place for the 2001 Federal election). Sources detailed in Excel workboook. Also available as a Stata dta file.
2001 Federal election results, House of Representatives, by polling place
Includes ALP votes, Formal, Informal, Total, for over 8,400 polling places (including absentee and provisional ballots, etc). Re-formatted from original Australian Electoral Commission sources. Comma delimited ASCII.
2004 Federal election results, House of Representatives, by polling place
Includes ALP votes, Formal, Informal, Total, and geographic identifiers (division, state, street address, suburb/town and postscode) for over 8,400 polling places. Re-formatted from original Australian Electoral Commission sources. Semi-colon delimited with header line ASCII.
Andrews Bill, 1996
There are few “conscience” votes in the Australian parliament (members of parliament almost always vote as party blocs). A few years ago I collected data on passage of the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996 (the “Andrews Bill”), a private member's bill to overrule a Northern Territory statute permitting euthanasia. The vote on the 3rd reading (final passage) of the bill in the House of Representatives (9 December 1996) is here as a raw text file.


links:
  • Social Science Data Archive, Australian National University, Canberra.
  • UWA Australian Government and Politics database
  • Australian Electoral Commission
  • Australian Parliamentary Library.
  • Public Opinion Polls: Roy Morgan, Newspoll, AC Nielsen