Party explanations for the 2022 Australian election result

ABSTRACT

Post-election reviews provide an opportunity for political parties to diagnose the reasons for their success or failure. Since 2019, the reviews conducted by the Australian Labor and Liberal parties have been made public, and they provide an ideal opportunity to test their explanations against the evidence. This paper identifies six explanations for the 2022 Australian federal election outcome and tests them using the 2022 Australian Election Study survey. Both reviews correctly identify the importance of leadership and the pandemic in shaping the election result but underplay the importance of independents and of climate change. Both reviews over-estimate changes in voting among women and immigrants. Overall, the reviews are only partially accurate in explaining the election result.

大选后的复盘为政党提供了查得失、明成败的机会。2019年以来，工党和自由党所做的总结已然公开，正可以将他们的解释与证据做一对比。本文列举了关于2022年澳大利亚联邦选举结果的六种解释，并用“2022澳大利亚选举研究”的调查对其进行了测试。两党都正确地指出了领导者及疫情对于选举结果有着重要影响，但也都低估了独立选举人以及气候变化的作用。二者都高估了女性及移民投票方面发生的变化。总之，两党对选举结果的解释部分正确。

KEYWORDS:

• Parties
• elections
• voting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The 2019 and 2022 Labor reviews and the 2022 Liberal review are public documents, but the 2019 Liberal review is available in summary form only. A useful summary can be found at https://www.miragenews.com/review-of-2019-federal-election-campaign/.

2 There were also two panel members, Craig Emerson and Linda White.

3 Full details of the survey methodology, as well as the datafiles, can be found at https://australianelectionstudy.org/.

4 Full details are at https://srcentre.com.au/our-research/life-in-australia-study.

5 The small number of National Party voters in the AES (n = 74) make it impractical to consider them as a separate category.

6 There were eight party leadership spills over this period, an average of one every 18 months, with four of the eight spills being successful and resulting in a new prime minister.

7 The phrase was coined by Nick Bryant, the BBC’s Australian correspondent. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-34249214.

8 The name derives from the colour used for campaign materials by a number of the successful independent candidates in 2022, following independent MP Zali Steggall’s successful use of the colour in 2019 ‘to stand out from the major parties’. The colour can be interpreted as a combination of conservative blue and environmental green or ‘something in between’. My thanks to an anonymous referee for clarifying this point.

9 The four incumbent MPs were Andrew Wilkie (Clark), Helen Haines (Indi), Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo) and Zali Steggall (Warringah). The six new MPs were Kate Chaney (Curtin), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein), Monique Ryan (Kooyong), Sophie Scamps (Mackellar), Kylea Tink (North Sydney) and Allegra Spender (Wentworth).

10 ‘Morrison infamously told a Sydney radio host: “I don’t hold a hose, mate.” This became a metaphor for the Prime Minister’s refusal to take responsibility during subsequent crises, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic’ (Combet and Oshalem 2022, 19)

11 First advanced by Mueller (1973), a crisis must be dramatic and international in scope, and pose a physical, economic or health threat to society.

12 The Labor review did note the incidence of tactical voting in Teal seats which it said ‘cannot be overlooked’ (Combet and Oshalem 2022, 37).

13 Amanda Stoker (Liberal–National senator for Queensland, 2018–2022) quoted in Australian Financial Review, 12 July 2022.

14 There is virtually no difference between the AES and CSES samples, with the Teal vote composed of 50 per cent former Labor and Green voters in the AES, and 49 per cent in the CSES sample.

15 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/bullets-women-march-4-justice-scott-morrison/13251804.

16 The Liberal review found that ‘Liberal defectors in “Teal seats” were highly likely to agree with the statement that “the treatment or attitude towards women within the Liberal Party had a strong influence on my vote”’ (Loughnane and Hume 2022, 31).

17 The two seats were Chisholm (with the largest number of Mandarin speakers in Australia) and Bennelong (the third largest). Both seats saw Labor candidates defeat the incumbent Liberal.

18 There is a substantial effect in the figure for being born in an Asian country, with these voters being less likely to vote Green and more likely to vote Labor compared to Coalition voters, but due to the small numbers the effects are not statistically significant.

19 The gap in popularity based on the thermometer scores between Albanese and Morrison in 2022 was 1.51. This compares with a mean gap in popularity between the incumbent and the challenger of 0.71 between 1987 and 2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian McAllister

Ian McAllister is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The Australian National University, Canberra.