Documenting the Inevitable: Voting behaviour at the 2013 Australian election

Abstract

In late June 2010, with the federal election looming, Kevin Rudd was replaced by his deputy, Julia Gillard, in a now infamous move against the serving prime minister (Simms and Wanna 2012). The election was held less than two months afterwards. Almost exactly three years later, in an ironic reversal of fortunes, the Australian Labor Party caucus reversed its stance and replaced Gillard with Rudd. As in 2010, the 2013 election also followed just over two months later.

The Leadership Contest: An end to the ‘messiah complex’?

“…A leading pollster noted he was the first federal Opposition Leader in four decades to win office with a net negative approval rating (Hartcher 2013b). Abbott's persistent unpopularity was corroborated by comparing the data on leadership ratings from the 2013 AES (Bean et al 2014) with its predecessors dating back to 1987 (McAllister 2011: 246-50). They indicate that, while marginally more popular than he had been at the 2010 election, Abbott had maintained the dubious mantle as the second worst rated opposition leader over the past quarter of a century behind Peacock in 1990.…”

“…He and his team may have tried to build the 'story' of the 'Rudd rebellion' against the perverse politics of the previous six years (see Hawker 2013), but in responding to the imperatives of this specious narrative they revealed the costs of sacrificing political logic. The boom and bust pattern of voter estimates of Rudd suggested by AES data (Bean et al 2014;McAllister 2011: 249)-between 2007 and 2013 he went from the most popular leader in the quarter of a century of AES surveys to being the lowest rated prime minister at an election-gives dramatic expression to the inherent vulnerability of the personalising leader.…”

‘I’m Not Expecting to Lose …’: The Election Overview and Campaign Narrative

“…The previous federal election in September 2013 had turned out largely to be a foregone conclusion; Labor was not competitive and suffered a 'thumping defeat' while the Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, scored the second-largest majority in the parliament since 1945 (Rayner and Wanna 2015). Tactically, 'Abbott's gambit' in plumping for a strategy of outright opposition across a small number of wedge issues paid off and made the result somewhat inevitable (see Bean and McAllister 2015;Johnson and Wanna 2015). By contrast, the 2016 election was a real competitive contest and, although many commentators correctly predicted the Coalition would be returned with a reduced majority, the eventual outcome surprised many by the closeness of the result and the many closely contested seats finishing on tight margins.…”

Australia

“…The closeness of the result was in part triggered by a minor party alliance that had been established in advance of the 2013 election, with minor and micro parties trading preferences with each other, across the left‐right spectrum, thereby ‘gaming’ the single transferable vote (STV) electoral system. The strategy led to the unlikely result of Labor's second Senator being defeated by a micro party candidate, despite Labor polling 1.86 quotas (26.6 per cent of the vote) and the micro party receiving 0.016 quotas (0.23 per cent of the vote) (Bean & McAllister ).…”

“…Ultimately, because of the missing ballots, the Australian Electoral Commission referred the count to the Court of Disputed Returns, which ordered that a second election for the Western Australian Senate take place on 5 April 2014. In this special election, the Liberals retained three seats, Labor was unable to win a second seat, and the Greens and the Palmer United Party won the remaining two (Bean & McAllister ). The new Senators’ six‐year terms began on 1 July 2014, with 12 new Senators taking up positions alongside the 64 who returned.…”