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Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a 'two-party preferred' vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral 'swing' and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins - the maternity as well as the paternity - of the 'two-party preferred'. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide-ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept - technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed 'uniform swing'- implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While national election campaigns have become increasingly personalized, it is unclear to what extent this trend has been replicated at the constituency level. Using surveys of Australian election candidates conducted from 1996 to 2010, this article tests the personalization hypothesis at the local constituency level. Three areas that may be affected by personalization are examined: constituency service; geographic proximity between candidates and potential voters; and local election campaigning. Among MPs, constituency service has grown in importance at the expense of local party engagement. However, among the broader group of candidates standing in the election, the results show that party-related activities deliver more votes than personal ones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses various aspects of the political conditions in Australia between July and December 2013, focusing on the reported tribalisation of Australian politics and the nation's 44th federal election on September 7, 2013 which featured interim Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. According to the article, Australia's Labor Party-led government was swept out in 2013 after two parliamentary terms in office. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and political campaigns are examined.

During the Australian Greens' first two decades of existence, electoral support for the party grew, and it was rewarded with ever-increasing numbers of its representatives occupying seats in Australian parliaments. The bases of electoral support for the Australian Greens are analysed, and its prospects in a two-party dominant system are considered. While the Australian Greens may never transcend small party status, the nature and source of its electoral support, combined with certain features of the institutional setting, provide it with a basis for a relatively enduring institutional and electoral presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a steady erosion of the major parties' share of the vote in Australia, minor parties have been unable to attract more than 15 per cent of the vote. Employing a variation of Katz and Mair's cartel party thesis, this paper argues that the major parties have an advantage in defining and limiting power sharing arrangements and setting and reacting to the policy agenda. They can act together to deny a third-party oxygen, or can deflect criticism of controversial policies onto the third party. A critical appraisal of seven cases of government formation involving the Australian Greens and Australian Democrats, along with two case studies of legislative negotiation shows that the electoral backlash is often borne by the minor parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research note replicates Leigh's (2008) analysis of pork-barrelling in Australian politics and tests the validity of his findings using geographic techniques. Distributive politics is integral to nearly all theories of legislative politics because it is fundamental to the connection between legislators and constituents, and can be used to facilitate coalition-building. This note addresses an aspect of pork-barrelling that has been overlooked in most previous scholarship. It argues that distributive politics is, at its core, a geographic, constituency-centred process. It is therefore essential to reconsider the conventional models and take geography into account in both substantive and statistical terms. To that end, we replicate several of Leigh's results using a relatively new technique, Geographically Weighted Regression, and reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity in the coefficients. Our findings highlight the importance of political geography and have important implications for studies of legislative politics and elections. 本文重复了李（2008）对澳大利亚政治分肥拨款的分析，用地理学技术检测了其发现有效性。分配政治内在于几乎所有的立法政治理论，因为它是立法者与选民之间联系的基础，有利于联盟的构建。本文探讨了分肥拨款被以往学术研究所忽略的一个方面。作者认为，分配政治其核心是一个地理的、以选区为中心的过程。因此有必要重新检讨固有的模式，切实而且从统计的意义上采纳地理的视角。我们使用了一种相对新近的技术，即地理加权回归分析来重复李的几个成果，发现空间同质系数很高。我们的发现突出了政治地理的重要性，对于立法政治以及选举的研究有参考意义。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We estimate the parameters of a reputational game of political competition using data from five two-party parliamentary systems. We find that latent party preferences (and party reputations) persist with high probability across election periods, with one exception: parties with extreme preferences who find themselves out of power switch to moderation with higher probability than the equivalent estimated likelihood for parties in government (extreme or moderate) or for moderate parties in opposition. We find evidence for the presence of significant country-specific differences. We subject the model to a battery of goodness-of-fit tests and contrast model predictions with survey and vote margin data not used for estimation. Finally, according to the estimated model parameters, Australia is less than half as likely to experience extreme policies and Australian governments can expect to win more consecutive elections in the long run as compared to their counterparts in Greece, Malta, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on candidate preselection in Australian political elections, also known as parliamentary gatekeeping. Topics include how elected politicians shape legislation in Australia, the impact of long-standing dominance by political parties in the Australian government, and calls for primaries for Australian politicians to lessen the impact of party preselections and oligarchical control.

Recent elections in the English-speaking world have thrown up results that were both unpredictable and history-making. In particular, the advent of multi-party and minority government in Britain and Australia, neither of which have proportional representation, raises questions about the capacity of major parties to remain dominant, and the place of minor parties and independents in the future. Here we argue that while the idiosyncrasies of the Australian political system have fostered the rise of independents in ways we are unlikely to see elsewhere, other features of the post-election negotiation process in the wake of the 2010 Australian election highlight the adaptive and innovative potential of major parties seeking office, and the resilience of smaller parties or independents seeking policy and votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article discussing the political preferences of Australian voters based on economic and postmaterialist values is presented. The author uses the example of the 2009 by-election for the Australian legislative seat of Higgins to examine an axis system created by scholars David Charnock and Peter Ellis, which measures the positions of Australian political parties, such as the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal/Nationals (Coalition,) by synthesizing data collected by the Australian Election Study (AES.) An analysis of the data, including voter turnout trends and ideological factors, is also included

In what ways, if any, do campaigns matter? Specifically, what can we say about election campaigns in Australia? If they shift votes, in what direction do voters move? A comparison of opinion poll data taken at the beginning of each of the last ten national elections with the distribution of the vote at the end of each campaign suggests that the gap in first preferences between government and opposition generally narrowed; certainly, it never widened. The data do not suggest that incumbency (being in government) is an advantage. Nor do the figures conjure visions of voters clambering on bandwagons—as we might expect if there were a 'spiral of silence'. Instead, the data point to an underdog effect, with the party that starts behind making up ground on the party that starts ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the leadership attributes and styles of the Prime Minister (John Howard) and the Leader of the Opposition (Kevin Rudd) prior to—and during—the Australian national election of 2007. Although he led his party to defeat, John Howard was still held in fair regard by the electorate. Kevin Rudd achieved high levels of popularity from the time he became Leader of the Opposition at the end of 2006 until the election of November 2007. Both leaders attracted comments about the elusiveness of their political personalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2007 results in New South Wales reflect hard work by Labor, as well as the complacency of the Coalition, especially its leadership. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is well and truly back at federal level in NSW, having won a more solid victory in two party preferred terms than the Coalition had in 1996. In 2007, voters in NSW did not distinguish in any substantial way between the House and the Senate in their voting and, overall, voter support for the minor parties seems to have 'settled back' to its 1996 figures. Nonetheless the minor parties continue to play an important role in the marginal seats which went to preferences. The 2007 election in NSW was far from 'normal' because the Prime Minister, John Howard, lost his own seat of Bennelong. That loss was due to several factors, the most important of which was the changed demographic profile of the seat, underlined by the 2005 redistribution. The return of the incumbent Liberal Malcolm Turnbull in the seat of Wentworth (winning the seat on first preferences with a swing of 10.1 per cent) is also noteworthy, not least because he became the leader of the Opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at politics in Australia in 2007. Changes made to the cabinet of Prime Minister John Howard are reviewed, noting the replacement of Minister for the Environment and Heritage Ian Gordon Campbell by Malcolm Bligh Turnbull. A chart is presented which compares the number of seats in the Australian House of Representatives won by political parties during the election of November 24, 2007, including the National Party, the Green Party, and the Labor Party. Several major issues in national politics are discussed, including the Workplace Relations Amendment Act, Howard's election loss to Kevin Rudd, and political leadership.

The Greens challenge the Australian two-party system by promoting an alternative political agenda and by facilitating democratic processes. Their recent successes in federal and state elections suggest that the party itself deserves closer scrutiny. This paper shows how the Greens are organisationally different from other parties currently active in Australian politics due to both their internal processes and their parliamentary practices. Recent theories of parties argue that party organisation has changed significantly for major parties, adopting an electoral-professional or cartel model that centralises power and decision-making in party representatives within parliaments. This paper shows how a smaller party uses identity formation processes to establish a distinctive organisational style. We examine the Greens' party organisation by analysing the interdependent relationships between the party membership, the state and national offices, and Green MPs. The paper is based on original research including in-depth interviews undertaken with state and federal Greens members of parliaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an overview of the political structure of and issues in Australia in 2004. Issues in national politics, including the performance of the political parties at the 2004 election; Free trade agreement reached between Australia and the U.S.; Political significance of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis within Australia.

The article focuses on several issues concerning national politics in Australia. According to the authors, the year 1999 was filled with debates on taxation reforms, the move for Australia to become a republic, and its dealings with the future of East Timor. The country is dominated by the Liberal party headed by Prime Minister John Howard who strongly voted no to retain the country's status under the queen of Great Britain, while most Australians were in favor of a republic. Furthermore, the article also includes a list of cabinet members of Howard including the number and percentage of parliamentary seats.