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Among the 1983 changes to the electoral rules for Australian Senate elections using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) was a new procedure for determining the transfer of vote surpluses. The adoption of this modified ('inclusive') Gregory method has tended to be overlooked in the literature, yet as this article shows—using both hypothetical and real-world examples—it incorporates an anomaly that could have significance for electoral outcomes. This has important implications not only with regard to whether the 'correct' candidate is elected, but also for wider social choice debates over the quasi-chaotic nature of STV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of lower-house seats at Australian State and federal elections rely on a distribution of preferences from Independent and small-party candidates before seats can be awarded. Actors have attempted to gain political capital from this situation by claiming that the preferences of particular small parties have affected election outcomes. This paper uses the events of the Western Australian State election held in 2001 to explore the validity of such claims. More specifically, it investigates the widely propagated contention that the One Nation Party' s anti-sitting-member preference strategy was a key determinant of the Coalition's electoral defeat. It concludes that the increased number of candidates contesting elections makes it difficult to assess whether the second and subsequent preferences of any particular small party were critical to the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern political campaigning is becoming increasingly professionalised to the extent that in Australia today the major parties use electoral databases to assist with their campaigns. The electoral databases of the Coalition ( Feedback ) and the Australian Labor Party ( Electrac ) store information on the constituents of each House of Representatives seat. The information gathered in the databases, such as the policy preferences and party identification of individual voters, are used by candidates for House seats to tailor correspondence to swinging voters, and to identify potential party supporters. Party organisations aggregate the information in the databases and use it to conduct polls and focus groups of swinging voters, and to tailor policy development and campaign strategies. Electoral databases have the potential to improve the level of communication between elected representatives and their constituents. There are, however, a number of ethical problems associated with their use. While the usefulness of the databases to the major political parties is undeniable, their use underlines the trend in modern campaigning towards targeting swinging voters at the expense of the majority of the electorate. Considerable public resources are devoted to the smooth operation of the databases. They would be much less effective were political parties not exempted from the Privacy Act. The use of personal information collected by members of parliament by political parties should be more closely regulated. Despite the wishes of the major political parties to keep their operation a secret, the advantages and disadvantages of the use of electoral databases should be more widely debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the article "The Proliferation of Identity Politics in Australia," by Elizabeth Fells, published in the March 2003 issue of the "Australian Journal of Political Science." Emphasis on the author's use of ministerial portfolios as an indicator of government responses to identity politics; Description of the Women's Electoral Lobby submission of 1974 to the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration.

Elections held under the MMP system provide opportunities for substantial split-ticket voting, whereby electors support one party in the list contest but another in the constituency contests. At New Zealand's first two elections using this system—in 1996 and 1999—37% and 35% of the voters, respectively, employed a split-ticket strategy. Estimates of the amount of splitting in each constituency between each pair of parties—in a seven-party system on each occasion—have allowed the successful testing of hypotheses relating its volume to party prospects in the constituencies and the amount of local campaigning. These findings are replicated in comparable analyses at the individual scale using survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines racial issues in the conduct of electoral politics in Australia. One Nation party leader Pauline Wilson's views on Aborigines and Asian immigration; Possibility of electoral realignment; Australian electorate's opinions on racial issues; Race and immigration in Australia's political ideology.