Advance voting with same-day registration: the impact on turnout in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

In-person advance voting has risen dramatically in New Zealand during recent elections: from only 11% of voters in 2008 to nearly half of voters in the 2017 general election. With such a popular programme, scholars and practitioners must question the implications of advance voting. This article considers two questions. First, did advance voting, implemented alongside same-day registration opportunities, increase turnout in 2017? Second, what are the characteristics of the areas with the highest rates of, and increases in, advance voting? This article employs the data published by the Electoral Commission and Census to provide precise assessments of the impact of advance voting in New Zealand. It finds that advance voting, when combined with on-site registration on advance voting days, increases turnout by about 7.6 percentage points in 2017. Furthermore, high rates of, and increases in, advance voting are predominant in areas with low levels of home ownership, which this article theorises is related more to urban environments, than income levels. Advance voting is also negatively related to levels of turnout, suggesting that this electoral reform is not only increasing in areas with existing high turnout cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Voting
• New Zealand
• election
• early voting
• voter turnout
• election management
• electoral integrity
• voter registration
• advance voting

Acknowledgement

This research was conducted while the author was an Endeavour Research Fellow at the Australian National University. The author also acknowledges the support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the form of a Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at here.

Notes

1. In New Zealand, an electorate is equivalent to an electoral district or riding.

2. For more details on the registration and voting process in New Zealand, consult the Elections New Zealand website (https://www.elections.org.nz/).

3. For more turnout statistics, see https://www.stats.govt.nz/reports/voting-and-political-participation.

4. An electorate is similar to an electoral district or riding. New Zealand has 64 general electorates and 7 Māori electorates. The Māori electorates are not studied in this article due to their unique composition. Electorates generally have around 60,000 people (see quotas set for the North Island, South Island and Māori electorates on the Elections New Zealand website https://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/electorates/reviewing-electorate-boundaries). These electorates are reapportioned periodically by the Representation Commission.

5. It is important to note that there are also specific Māori electorates. Thus not all Māori voters in a geographic electorate will be voting in said geographic electorate.

6. Data on advance voting rates were provided in email communication with Elections New Zealand, April 23, 2018. Data on overall turnout and margin of victory was made available through their online elections statistics portal: http://www.elections.org.nz/news-media/new-zealand-2014-general-election-official-results and http://www.elections.org.nz/news-media/new-zealand-2017-general-election-official-results.

7. The most recent census data available is from 2014: https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/electorate-profiles/ .

8. This method mirrors the one used by Blais, Dobrzynska, and Loewen (2007) in their study of Canada’s experience with advance voting.

9. It should be noted that the percentage of the population that identfy as Māori in the census includes both Māori who are on the Māori roll as well as those on their geographic electorate roll.

10. One may argue that this sizable increase may have something to do with the 3 percentage point increase in turnout in 2017, perhaps related to Jacinda Arden’s attention-grabbing national campaign. However, all electorates studied would experience the same changes in the dynamics of the national campaign.

11. Results for advance voting and election-day voting as a percentage of the electorate, with some analysis, can be found in Appendix B.

12. Unfortunately, population density or a similar measurement of urban/rural electorate is not available in the electorate profiles provided by New Zealand’s Census.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Holly Ann Garnett

Holly Ann Garnett is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada.