Why do people vote the way they do? And do they even know why they vote that way?
These questions have arisen from some work done by Datacol, The Canberra Times pollster, along with the polling for the ACT Legislative Assembly and the Federal ACT seats.
The answers have been made more interesting and paradoxical now the vote is in.
Some of the paradoxes to emerge are:
Very few voters say that the sex of the candidate affects their vote. It was the least important of nine characteristics. Yet there was a marked female factor in the ACT.
Half the voters think we elect people of lower quality than needed; yet it seems voters have returned sitting MLAs in the major parties rather than taking up the opportunity offered by Hare-Clark to put in new blood of the party of their choice.
“”Involvement with the community” is rated by voters as the second most important characteristic in voting for a candidate; yet voters have elected some Democrats from nowhere and ditched Dave Rugendyke who plodded around the community diligently if not very effectively and did not look at the people who slaved away on behalf of the Gungahlin community.
From these paradoxes we can conclude that people are not especially honest with themselves or the pollster when describing their voting behaviour, or they do not know what drives their voting behaviour
Bear in mind that the pollster is otherwise very accurate.
Amid all the complexity, change and unusual character of this electorate and its political system, Datacol has got the fundamentals right every election since 1989 – usually against the popular wisdom. Four weeks ago the accepted wisdom was that Rugendyke and Paul Osborne would get back and the Democrats would follow previous patterns of not getting elected. Then the first Datacol poll showed Rugendyke and Osborne were gone and the Democrats were roaring home.
Some interesting facts:
Party allegiance in the ACT has been extremely constant in the ACT since this question was first asked in 1992, particularly since 1995. The number of people who describe themselves as very strong, strong or weak ALP or Liberal has remained steady, as has the swinging vote and “others”.
The Labor vote is more rusted on than the Liberals. Party leaders are more important to the Liberals than Labor.
Voters are adept at distinguishing between the Senate and the House. The same sample of people gave Labor 42 per cent in the House, but just 33 per cent in the Senate and gave the Democrats just 10 per cent in the House and 18 per cent in the Senate.
Coming back to the female-vote paradox. This is not about how women vote. It is a secret ballot and we cannot know that. But there was a discernible trend in the results of the election towards female candidates when other things were equal. There is only anecdotal evidence that women voted this way. There is also anecdotal evidence that men voted this way. Whether either sex did it to get some balance in an Assembly that had 15 males among 17 members is possible, especially given the publicity given to former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner’s visit to the ACT and her promotion of Emily’s List (Early Money is Like Yeast.
The female vote manifested itself in the ACT as follows:
Three new Democrat candidates in Brindabella: female gets seat over two males.
Third successful new Labor candidate in Molonglo: female gets seat over two others females and two other males.
Second Liberal in Molonglo: sitting female gets it over sitting male (though still a chance that a non-sitting female may get it).
Democrats in Brindabella: lesser known female (Jolley) beats better known male (Mico).
New Labor seat in Brindabella: Third seat goes to female beating two males (one of whom was better known).
Woman leads the non-sitting Labor candidates in Brindabella.
Male beaten by three females in a list of four Democrats in Molonglo.
True a male picked up the vacant Liberal seat in Brindabella over two females, Steve Pratt, but he was very well-known, so all things were not equal.
Sure, this female trend was not enough to unseat a significant number of sitting males in major parties, but the trend is there.
The trend, though, is perhaps not as strong as the “”my party right or wrong” trend, because no sitting major party MLA was axed by new blood.
As the table shows the party and the party leader are highly important to voters. Incidentally, when that is cut according to sex, more females (56) rate the party as of high importance than males (46) and more females (56) rate the party leader as of high importance than males (42). Niceness (20-13) and community (67-49) were more important for females than males. Otherwise there was little difference.
We can say from this that being a sitting member of one of the four main political parties has been and is likely to be the key factor in getting elected in the ACT, despite a “”female factor”, with the possible exception of Helen Cross ousting both Greg Cornwell and Jacqui Burke for the second Liberal seat in Molonglo.
It seems that not enough is known about individuals within parties for voters to stray from sitting MLAs to new candidates in their favoured party.
Yet, those who work more closely to candidates (usually journalists and people who work in MLAs’ offices) can cite lots of examples of the new candidates bristling with more brains, verve and talent than some sitting MLAs who are regarded as drones and morons. True, other sitting MLAs are known as hard-working, intelligent and worthy. The damnation is how to tell which are which to the voters without offending the laws of defamation, appearing to play favourites or appearing opinionated. Or how to get the voters interested enough through the term and during the campaign so they can work it out themselves.
Or do we just get the drones we deserve and little can be done about it.
ABOUT THE POLL:
October 14-17. Sample Size : 749. Method : Computer Assisted Telephone Interview. Person in household with most recent birthday
Questions asked: We are also interested in the factors that voters take into account when deciding who to vote for in ACT elections. When you personally are deciding who will get your number one vote, how important are the following things? (see table)