Valence politics and immigrant voting in the 2013 Australian election

ABSTRACT

Using data from the 2013 Australian Election Study, this article investigates voting patterns among Australian voters from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESB). It reveals that a valence politics model – comparing images of the two major parties and their leaders, partisan attachments, and judgements about party performance on economic issues – outperforms rival models. That is, it provides a powerful explanation of the decisions NESB voters made. In deciding between competing parties in the 2013 election, NESB voters resembled Australian voters who emigrated from English-speaking backgrounds and Australian-born voters. The findings of this article offer new insights into electoral research in Australia, indicating that previous studies have underestimated the important role of the valence politics model in explaining voting patterns among Australian voters. The article also provides plausible explanations for the convergence between various cohorts of voters in the 2013 election.

本文使用了2013年澳大利亚选举研究的数据，研究了非英语背景投票者的投票模式。研究发现，效价政治模式——比较两个主要政党及其领导人、党派热情、以及党派在经济事务上的表现——超过了竞争模式。这为非英语背景投票者做出的选择提供有力的解释。2013年选举中在不同政党之间做出选择，非英语背景投票者的情况与英语背景移民以及澳大利亚出生者的情况类似。本文为澳大利亚的选举研究提供了新观点。以往的研究低估了效价政治在解释澳大利亚选民的选举方式中所扮演的重要角色。本文还对2013年选举中不同期投票群体的趋同情形提出了可信的解释。

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• immigrant
• voting choice
• valence politics

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank early readers of this research, especially Professor Clive Bean, and the AJPS reviewers and editors for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Liang Jiang is a Ph.D. candidate at University of Technology Sydney, Australia. His research interests include political behaviour, election campaigns, political integration of migrants.

Notes

1. This preference for Labor has been shown in data from Australian Election Study (AES) which has been running as a series of surveys being conducted at each federal election since 1987.

2. The Commonwealth in its Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (Cth) expressly excluded non-British migrants from the voting process unless a state law gave them that right. This prohibition was continued in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cth), and to some extent in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1961 (Cth).

3. The shift of NESB voters from left to right seems to be a consistent one from 2007 to the 2013 federal election. The proportions voting for Labor and Liberal were 44 and 37 per cent, respectively, in the 2010 federal election, and 57 and 33 per cent in the 2007 federal election.

4. Given that this study focuses on immigrants, the issue of the representativeness of the immigrants in the sample arises. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2015) data indicate that the proportions of immigrants in the 2013 AES match population estimates for 2013. Just 25 per cent of the AES sample was born overseas, compared with over 27 per cent in the Australian population. Proportions born in individual countries, for example New Zealand, Italy, Vietnam, Germany, Greece and Netherlands, also match the population estimates quite closely. Those born in the UK are somewhat overrepresented in the AES (8.1 per cent compared with 5.3 per cent in the population). Conversely, those born in China are somewhat underrepresented in the AES (1.0 per cent compared with 1.8 per cent in the population). Overall the sample in the 2013 AES reflects the proportions of Australian population in 2013. Bean (2012) took the view that the sample of surveys cannot be distributed evenly since those respondents who are better educated and more literate are more likely to complete it. For overseas-born respondents, those who have good English-language skills are more likely to complete the survey. The extent to which this may be a greater issue for immigrants remains unanswered.

5. The countries from which ESB citizens emigrated are shown in Table A1.1.