After reading a post by @mrteidt I was left with the question how many of the 13 million or so votes cast in the Federal Election do not make it to the big-four (Labor, Liberal, National, and The Greens)?[1] Reviewing statistics published by the Australian Electoral Commission I learned just over 10% of House of Representatives votes (1.3 million) either go to minor parties on first preferences or are informal votes. While it is true it is not the number of votes but the number of seats which decide elections, there does appear to be a significant opportunity for the party with the right packaging to access an increasing pool of potential voters.[2]
The graph below summarises House of Representatives votes for the last four Federal elections.
Federal Election 2001 – 2010 House of Representatives Votes
Some highlights are:
- The 1.6m figure for The Rest during the 2001 Election is mainly 620,248 for The Democrats and 498,028 for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Both parties went on to garner less than 145,000 votes each at the 2004 election, and less than 132,000 collectively at the 2007 election;
- There has been a gradual decrease in the flow of votes to minor parties;
- The Greens have almost trebled their vote since 2001; and
- Excluding a drop in 2007 the rate of informal votes appears to be increasing.
The informal vote count interested me so I dug a little deeper. The graph below details the informal votes since the 1993 election.
Federal Election House of Representative Informal Votes
With the exclusion of the 2007 election there is a trend in percentage terms. In the 1993 election there were 11.3 million registered voters, which had increased to 14.1 million by the 2010 election. This means not only is the number of potential votes increasing but also the percentage of informal votes. The 2007 result indicates the opportunity to harvest this increasing number of informal voters if the correct package is presented.
All in all I found this dipping of my toes into the Electoral data interesting. There appears to be a slow decrease in the number of votes going to the minor parties, and an increase in the number of informal votes. Perhaps the decrease in the number of minor parties is because running an election is an expensive thing to do. Perhaps the informal vote increase is a symptom of the inability of the parties to engage with the electorate. Both questions for another day. While it is true it is not the number of votes but the number of seats which decides the election, there does appear to be a significant opportunity for the party with the right packaging to access an increasing pool of potential voters.
[1] I’ve separated the Coalition into its constituent parts (Liberal, National) as they are treated as separate political party’s at voting time, with the exception of the merged party in Queensland.
[2] The Australian Electoral Commission provides a wealth of statistics. If you are interested in in-depth analysis of electoral statistics I recommend some excellent blogs including one by Antony Green and The Tally Room. The purpose of this post is to not attempt to replicate those blogs but to examine the question how many votes don’t go to the big-four. I’ve left the Senate for another day.
Paul lives in the ACT and dreams of one-day writing awesome research articles and perhaps a novel. Paul’s interested in the interconnected nature of things and can be found on Twitter (@davispg) or his own blog.
Filed under: Greens, House of Representatives, Independents, Labor, Liberal, Minor parties, Nationals, Voters / voting
