Public opinion and policy responsiveness: the case of same-sex marriage in Australia

Explaining the Australian marriage equality vote: An aggregate-level analysis

“…These aggregate-level relationships relating religious denomination, political attitudes, household composition and age structure to support for same-sex rights align with findings at the individual level in studies of American public opinion (Becker, 2012; Brewer, 2003a, 2003b; Flores, 2014; Gaines and Garand, 2010; Sherkat et al, 2011). These findings also align with the Australian experience, where Carson and colleagues (2018) find that respondents with no religion, younger voters and the university-educated were more likely to support same-sex marriage. Conversely electoral divisions with fewer same-sex couples, a higher average Liberal-National two-party vote across the most recent elections, and a greater proportion of overseas-born residents tended to have stronger opposition to same sex marriage (Carson et al, 2018).…”

“…These findings also align with the Australian experience, where Carson and colleagues (2018) find that respondents with no religion, younger voters and the universityeducated were more likely to support same-sex marriage. Conversely electoral divisions with fewer same-sex couples, a higher average Liberal-National two-party vote across the most recent elections, and a greater proportion of overseas-born residents tended to have stronger opposition to same sex marriage (Carson et al, 2018).…”

“…Analyses of contextual effects at the aggregate level and ecological inferences are distinct endeavours (Katz and King, 1999), and our project here is the former. An individual-level analysis of Australian attitudes towards same-sex marriage has been provided by Carson and colleagues (2018). Our ecological analysis here is complementary in that it models the actual returns of the postal vote, and not stated (attitudinal) support for same-sex marriage (see also McAllister and Snagovsky, 2018).…”

“…Still, the voluntary survey was politically expedient for the Liberal-National Coalition government, allowing it to keep its promise from the 2016 election campaign to hold a plebiscite of sorts on the issue, even though it was subsequently twice unable to command support in the Senate to pass the necessary enabling legislation to do so. The postal survey did not require legislation to be passed, and thus allowed the government to deal with the impasse on same-sex marriage policy caused by conflict between factions within the Coalition over the issue (Carson et al, 2018). McAllister (2011) argues that Australia’s main political parties typically avoid adjudicating on ‘moral’ issues, since they tend to promote intra-party divisions.…”

“…Same-sex marriage has been classically labelled a ‘morality’ issue in political science and as such has been considered especially appropriate for studying the relationship between public opinion and policy responsiveness (Carson et al, 2018; Meier, 1999). In the thoroughly studied American case, the politics of same-sex rights have been cast as a moral issue (Ellis and Kasniunas, 2011).…”