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Canberra Today 25°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Who contributed to Morrison’s shock win?

WOMEN, young people and people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods were among the groups of people who were likely to change their votes last minute before the 2019 Federal Election, according to ANU data. 

“The most common reason given was their views on the local candidate had changed,” says associate Prof Nicholas Biddle, from the ANU.

As part of an ANUpoll series of surveys, Mr Biddle examined voter volatility – or changes in who Australians said they would vote for in the lead-up to the May election, and who they actually voted for on election day.

He found more than a quarter of those surveyed ended up voting for a different party than the one they’d indicated.

According to Mr Biddle the data is the first time voter volatility in an Australian election has been measured.

“We saw a swing towards the Coalition during the election campaign that came mainly from those who’d intended to vote for minor parties, or didn’t know who they would vote for. Obviously, this swing was not picked up by the polls,” he says.

“The ‘other’ and ‘don’t know’ voters appear to have had a big impact on the May election.

“Data like this is far and away the most powerful tool for understanding voter volatility and changes in voting intention and helps explain why the polls got it so wrong. In the past, we haven’t been able to measure voter volatility as a key driver of results. Clearly this election results shows that we need to.”

Prof Biddle says the survey provides a fascinating insight into those who swung towards the major parties.

“These people were more likely to be female, at the upper end of the age distribution, non-Indigenous, without a university education, and living outside the most disadvantage areas in Australia,” he says.

“We can learn a lot about the result and the failure of polls to predict election outcomes by looking at those who didn’t intend to vote for the Coalition, but ended up doing so.”

While some of these characteristics align with traditional models of voting behaviour, others, such as low education, were more of a surprise.

“These individuals also tended to be less supportive of population growth. And despite the popular narrative, they were no more likely to support populist views,” he says.

“Interestingly, those swinging towards Labor tended to be the least risk averse. If Labor had been able to convince a slightly larger percentage of those who were relatively risk averse to change their vote to Labor, the election outcome could’ve been quite different.”

Prof Biddle says these results prove who a person says they’ll vote for on a particular day is a far from perfect predictor of who they’ll end up voting for. This has clear implications for polling in Australia.

“More care and transparency about how these groups are treated should be a real focus of any adjustments to polling in Australia,” he says.

“In the end, polls are just sample surveys, often undertaken on a small percentage of the population. There’s a considerable skill and science around turning that into something more meaningful. Election polls tend to get pretty close, but like any survey, are prone to errors.”

The results from ANUpoll have been published as a working paper via csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/working-papers

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