Early voting in Australia: the costs and benefits of convenience

ABSTRACT

Pre-election day voting increases the opportunities for citizens to vote in an election. This paper asks who votes before election day in Australia and whether early voters and election day voters decide their vote differently. In Australia’s compulsory voting system early voting lowers the costs of voting for citizens who would otherwise be compelled to vote on a prescribed day. We may therefore expect that in a compulsory system, early voting has the effect of bringing forward some voter turnout, while aggregate turnout is unaffected. Using 2016 Australian Election Study data, we find that early voters do not appear to suffer time constraints distinguishing them from election day voters: they are no more likely to have caring responsibilities nor to work in time-inflexible occupations. Early voters tend to be older than election day voters, and are more likely to strongly dislike the leader of their non- preferred party. However, feelings towards the parties generally and the state of the economy are not related to early voting. This research suggests that of expanding the voting period in compulsory systems provides greater voter convenience but reduces the capacity of campaign promises and events to affect vote choice.

KEYWORDS:

• Voting
• elections
• convenience
• compulsory voting
• Australia

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the advice and comments of participants at the 2017 Australian Society for Quantitative Political Science annual meeting, held in Wellington, New Zealand in December 2017.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Among the sample of 2711 respondents, 1076 strongly dislike at least one party, 325 strongly dislike the Liberal Party, 344 strongly dislike the Australian Labor Party, 300 strongly dislike the Nationals, and 683 strongly dislike the Australian Greens.

2. Results available from the authors.

3. We find there is insufficient variance within the subsample of Greens voters in the House of Representatives (n = 255) to perform multivariate analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jill Sheppard

Dr Jill Sheppard is a lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on public opinion, political participation, survey methodology, and Australian politics.

Katrine Beauregard

Dr Katrine Beauregard is a lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on gender politics and political participation.