As the Senate election re-run looms, we look at where voters in the state, and nationally, sit on a range of electoral issues

Although Western Australia is a relatively leftwing state it’s also the second most supportive of the government’s “turn back the boats” policy according to a long-running political study.

With the upcoming Western Australian Senate election we’re taking a look at where voters in the state, and nationally, sit on various electoral issues. It’s a big read, but stick with it – this is far more in-depth than your garden variety opinion poll.

The Australian Election Study (AES) is an academic study conducted after every Australian federal election since 1987. It’s one of the most comprehensive looks at Australian political attitudes and behaviour through time, and all of the results here are from an analysis of the most recent AES data.

For starters, Western Australians consider themselves to be a leftwing state.

When asked to place themselves on a scale of 0 (left) to 10 (right) with 5 being centre, Western Australians identify as more leftwing (4.89) compared with the average Australian (5.03). The most leftwing jurisdiction is the ACT at 4.15 and South Australia and Queensland are tied for most rightwing at 5.45.

Nationally, Australia is swinging away from the right, dropping from 5.46 in 1996 to 5.03 in 2013.

Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Survey, 1987-2013, Australian National University, 2014 p. 39 Photograph: /Ian McAllister & Sarah Cameron

The most important issues for Western Australians in 2013 were management of the economy, education, healthcare and Medicare.

And here are the same issues nationally, for comparison:

For Western Australians who changed their vote from Labor in 2010 to Liberal in 2013, the issues they were most interested in were economic management, refugees and taxation – but not the carbon tax.

Of those who switched their vote from the incumbent Labor party to the Greens, the environment, education and refugees were the most important issues.

This suggests Labor was wedged on asylum seekers. Be prepared to hear a lot more about boats in the coming weeks from the government because it is a more important issue to swinging voters in Western Australia than Australia in general:

Most people who shifted their vote from Labor to Liberal agreed with turning back the boats – 71% in Western Australian and 58% nationally.

In Western Australia, 51% of those who remained Labor voters in 2013 agreed with turning back the boats. This segment of the Labor vote has been constantly targeted by the Coalition because it can exploit this Labor electoral weakness, hence it remains in our national discourse.

If we take the focus off swing voters, over time Australians have started to progressively reject the idea of turning back the boats. For the first time since 2001 there is not majority support to turn back boats carrying asylum seekers.

National support for "turn back the boats" policy. From Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Survey, 1987-2013, Australian National University, 2014 p. 60 Photograph: /Ian McAllister & Sarah Cameron

And now, on to electoral issues at the national level, which we could also see play out in the WA re-run.

The economy

The issues of taxation and unemployment appear not to be as important to voters nationally as they once were, but they may have been reconceptualised by voters as “management of the economy”, something more difficult to pin down and measure.

Healthcare has constantly been a high priority at Australian elections in the past two decades, while most issues ebb.

Most important election issues. From Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Survey, 1987-2013, Australian National University, 2014 p. 21) Photograph: Ian McAllister & Sarah Cameron

Household finances

Each year over the past two decades Australians who feel that their household finances are getting worse have outnumbered those who think they are improving.

The only exception to this was the 2004 election when Australian commodity export prices spiked to 40% of their 1999 prices and the Australian dollar increased from 50 US cents in 2001 to 78 US cents, increasing the overseas purchasing power of Australians.

Financial situation of households over past year. From Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Survey, 1987-2013, Australian National University, 2014 p. 27 Ian McAllister & Sarah Cameron

Unions and big business

Most Australians believe big business in Australia has too much power at 66% in 2013, while only 45% believe this is true of trade unions. Perception of union power has effectively halved since 1979 when 82% of Australians felt trade unions had too much power compared with 2013.

There has been a trend of Australians believing big business has too much power, about 60% in 1967, to 71% in 1998 – after the waterfront dispute between the Maritime Union of Australia and Patrick Corporation – remaining stable to 2010 after mining companies spent $22m on a political campaign to water down the Rudd government’s mining tax.

The power of trade unions and big business. From Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Survey, 1987-2013, Australian National University, 2014 p. 53 Photograph: Ian McAllister & Sarah Cameron

Government spending and taxation

There has been a clear trend of declining support for tax cuts, while there has been a marked increase in support for more spending on social services. In 1987 65% of Australians wanted to pay less tax, compared with the low of 34% in 2007 and 36% in 2013. In 1987 15% of Australians wanted more social services which increased to 47% in 2007, before declining to 30% in 2013.

A large and growing demographic of Liberal voters want more of a particular social service: healthcare. Some 78% of Liberal voters over the age of 65 want more health expenditure.

This has the potential to be Labor’s “stop the boats” issue. In the same demographic of elderly Liberal voters only 24% want to increase social services in general, and 39% want to cut taxes – but the 78% support for increased health expenditure would drive a wedge between Liberals who do not want to pay for Australia’s ageing population.

Government spending. From Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Survey, 1987-2013, Australian National University, 2014 p.54 Photograph: Ian McAllister & Sarah Cameron

Marriage equality for same sex couples

For the first time there is a question on the issue of same-sex marriage in the study which shows a majority support same-sex marriage, but not to the same extent as previous commercial polling has shown.

Respondents were asked to respond to the question, should “same-sex marriages be prohibited?”, and people who agreed with a ban were given a value of 1, neutral a 2, and disagreed a 3. So higher values indicate more support for same-sex marriage.

All states and territories have majority support for equal marriage rights because the mean value was above two on this scale. Support is particularly high in the ACT and Tasmania.

Methods

All AES studies are national, post-election self-completion surveys with a sample drawn randomly from the electoral roll. It is a weighted survey using census data. If you’re interested you can read the monograph outlining methods.

The 2013 survey had 3,955 responses. Because there were 14,812,090 people enrolled to vote in 2013 there is 95% confidence that these results are correct within a margin of error about 1.56%. All the results shown here were statistically significant.

If you want to access the data you’ll find a copy at the Australian Data Archive, which is explained here.

Update

To address a few of the comments here’s how the self-identification of WA voters as leftwing squares with recent electoral results:

“Strangely Western Australians are more left wing (4.89) than the average Australian (5.03) (0.14) yet they tend to vote for the Liberal in far larger numbers. This is because Western Australians consider the Liberal party to be more centrist (5.93) than the average Australian (6.49)“

The full state-by-state breakdown of political parties is here.



