Australia Voting and Elections Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Australia Voting and Elections - Essay Example Identified with very strong identifiers people are more likely to vote in accordance with their identification and that identification is not very strong and is mostly influenced. Voters also have strategic choices. These are influenced by the number of votes they have been allocated, the way preferences may be ordered, and the manner of distributing votes among the candidates. Party identifiers influence the voters to take their decisions earlier and those people who take their decision earlier are often determined about their voting and they don't feel hesitation. Voting behavior in Australia is also influenced through developing a retrospective view which emerges from an assessment of several social, economical and political issues. A view or assessment on a particular issue helps the voters taking their decisions. So the comments of a party leader, his view on especial issue, the decision taken by him, party philosophy change the voter's mentality. The decisions, changes and reforms taken by the previous government make deep impression in the voting behavior of Australian citizens. Different electoral systems can prompt different voting behavior. It cannot be assumed that every voter would support the same party under one system as another. Since around the middle of the 1960s, one of the most important elements of electoral politics in almost all advanced, democratic industrial societies has been the noticeable weakening of party identification. The various aspects of party identification have already influenced and are influencing the elections of Australia time to time and the share of power which is responsible various political events. For example, in 1996, however, there was a notable drop in the level of identification with the ALP, but no corresponding rise for the Coalition. In 1998 the level of identification with the ALP recovered slightly but then declined again in 2001 (to a level slightly below that of even 1996) and even further in 2004. The level of identification with the Coalition parties has remained relatively constant at around 40 per cent since 1979 and the result has also followed consecutive effects. For another instance, it can be mentioned the possibility that the increased measured level of party identification for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in 1987 may have been a result of this question-wording effect (though even if true, this still would account for only a part of the effect). There may also have been an electoral system effect resulting from the Australian use of exhaustive preferential voting (Charnock). It has long been suspected that the order in which candidates' names are placed on a ballot somehow influences the decision-making process of voters. Theories of ballot position have suggested, variously, that candidates benefit from being placed first on the ballot, due to a 'primacy effect', or last on the ballot, due to a 'recency effect' (Koppell and Steen, 2004). Party identification has various aspects as for it influence the voters to support minor parties and independent candidates, knowing that their preferences may be used to decide the winner. Thus, votes for minor