Vote Compass: Australians want more action on climate change

Updated

Most Australians think the Government should do more to tackle climate change, according to the latest data from Vote Compass.

While the environment has not featured much in the election campaign so far, 61 per cent of Australians believe the Government should do more to tackle global warming.

Women and younger voters feel most strongly about taking action on climate change while less than one-fifth of respondents believe the Government should do less.

ABC election analyst Antony Green writes that yesterday's Vote Compass figures reveal the public wants something done about climate change, but they do not all like the solution the Gillard/Rudd government came up with.

Vote Compass asked: How much should the federal government do to tackle climate change?

Party lines divide on a carbon price

Voters are split along clear ideological lines on the question of putting a price on carbon.

Eighty-two per cent of Greens voters believe there should be a price on carbon emissions, compared to 71 per cent of Labor voters and 24 per cent of Coalition voters.

Proposing to end the carbon tax early and bring in a floating price was one of Kevin Rudd's first actions when he resumed the prime ministership, while Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has long campaigned to "axe" the carbon tax.

Vote Compass asked for views on the statement: The federal government should put a price on carbon.

FAQ

What is this?

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called the federal election for September 7, the ABC immediately launched Vote Compass.

Since then, we have received more than 900,000 responses, as people used the tool to see how their views compare to the parties' policies.

Between now and election day, the ABC will reveal weighted data gathered using the application.

This report explores how people responded to questions on climate change and carbon pricing.

The data has been weighted by gender, age, education, enrolment as a student, religion, marital status, industry and state using the latest population estimates to be a true representation of opinion at the time of the field, resulting in an effective sample size of 402,186 respondents.

Vote Compass is not a random sample. Why are the results being represented as though it is a poll?

Vote Compass is not a poll. It is primarily and fundamentally an educational tool intended to promote electoral literacy and stimulate public engagement in the policy aspect of election campaigns.

That said, respondents' views as expressed through Vote Compass can add a meaningful dimension to our understanding of public attitudes and an innovative new medium for self-expression. Ensuring that the public has a decipherable voice in the affairs of government is a critical function of a robust democracy.

Online surveys are inherently prone to selection bias but statisticians have long been able to correct for this (given the availability of certain variables) by drawing on population estimates such as Census micro-data.

We apply sophisticated weighting techniques to the data to control for the selection effects of the sample, thus enabling us to make statistical inferences about the Australian population with a high degree of confidence.

The Vote Compass data sample was weighted on the basis of: gender; age; education; students; religion; marital status.

How can you stop people from trying to game the system?

There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the authenticity of each record in the dataset.

Vote Compass does not make its protocols in this regard public so as not to aid those that might attempt to exploit the system, but among standard safeguards such as IP address logging and cookie tracking, it also uses time codes and a series of other measures to prevent users from gaming the system.

Want to know more?

Try it yourself

Find out where you stand with Vote Compass

First posted