Who elected the One Nation, Xenophon and Lambie senators?

A deep data analysis provides some clues.

The Australian Parliament now has the largest number of crossbench senators in its history — but who elected them?

Data reveals very different voting patterns got senators from the One Nation, Xenophon and Lambie parties elected.

Here are five things revealed by a deep analysis of Senate voting patterns in every polling booth across the country.

The One Nation vote was higher in areas with more Australian-born voters

Across Australia, Pauline Hanson's One Nation attracted a higher vote in areas that have a higher proportion of voters born in Australia.

Each dot on the scatter plot above represents a Queensland polling booth: dots that appear higher on the chart represent booths that recorded higher One Nation votes, and dots further to the right have a higher percentage of Australian-born voters.

The line shows the clear correlation between the two sets of data.

Four One Nation senators were elected in July — two in Queensland, one in New South Wales and one in Western Australia.

One Nation supports zero net migration for Australia and Senator Hanson's hostile views on Asian and Muslim migration are well known.

The chart above shows the trend in One Nation voting across Queensland, but the correlation between areas with fewer migrants and a higher One Nation vote was seen in every state.

Notably, there is a small cluster of polling booths that stand out in the bottom-right corner of the Queensland chart. These represent places that voted strongly against the trend: they have a very low One Nation vote but a very high proportion of people born in Australia.

A closer look reveals why: these booths are mainly Queensland Aboriginal communities, such as Doomadgee and Bamaga.

Across Queensland, however, there was no correlation of note between the One Nation vote and areas with a higher or lower proportion of Indigenous voters.

Disadvantaged communities showed stronger support for One Nation

Disadvantage was the most consistent link to high One Nation votes.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics assigns each suburb in Australia a socio-economic ranking between 1 (most disadvantaged) and 10 (least disadvantaged).

Voters in disadvantaged suburbs were more likely to vote one for One Nation across the country.

The chart above shows the pattern in Queensland, but it was replicated across all states.

One Nation votes were also higher in areas where fewer voters are tertiary educated. This trend was again seen across all the states.

In South Australia, for instance, in places where 10 to 20 per cent of people are tertiary educated, the One Nation vote is higher.

In areas where the percentage of tertiary educated people is above 50 per cent, the One Nation vote falls.

Antony Green, the ABC's election analyst, says there has been a strong correlation between One Nation votes and disadvantage since the party was established in the 1990s.

"These are in Labor-voting electorates, but One Nation is taking the votes of people who would otherwise vote Liberal in those areas," he said.

"In Australia people vote according to their economic advantage, but there's an underlying issue of their values that is not related to class. One Nation support taps into that divide."

Communities with more Muslims showed slightly lower One Nation vote

Across the country, there was a weak negative correlation between the number of votes for One Nation and the local Islamic population.

For example, One Nation scored less than 1 per cent of first preference Senate votes in the western Sydney suburb of Lakemba, where Muslims make up about 52 per cent of the population.

Across NSW, Muslims make up more than 10 per cent of the population in a small number of suburbs. The first preference One Nation vote in those areas was less than 5 per cent.

In most NSW suburbs Muslims make up less than 5 per cent of the population, and in those areas the One Nation vote was spread across the range from zero to 20 per cent.

Xenophon voters don't exhibit the same sorts of trends

Three Nick Xenophon team (NXT) senators were elected in South Australia, but pinning down the people who elected NXT is much more difficult than for One Nation.

Votes for the NXT were more evenly distributed in South Australia than votes for other crossbench parties, which means sociodemographic trends were less likely to be linked with a higher or lower vote.

Nick Xenophon's party fights to protect Australian farming and manufacturing jobs. Even so, there was no link between votes for his party and the proportion of people who work in manufacturing in South Australia.

Similarly there was no link between votes for the NXT and how disadvantaged a suburb is.

In fact, there was no clear link between the Xenophon vote and any one of a wide range of socio-demographic factors — including tertiary education, unemployment and age.

But a vote for the NXT was less likely in areas where the percentage of people who identified their religion as Islam was higher.

Antony Green said support for the Nick Xenophon team was similar to the old Australian Democrats, who have not been represented in Parliament since 2007.

Lambie vote was highly polarised

Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie is the sole representative of her party in Canberra. She claims to represent "average Australians" who "want a hand up", and Defence Force members in particular.

Unlike the NXT in South Australia, Senator Lambie's vote was significantly affected by geography in Tasmania.

A third of the votes for the Jacqui Lambie Network came from the north-western Tasmanian electorate of Braddon.

The average proportion of first preference votes across Tasmania for Senator Lambie was around 8 per cent, but in some polling booths in Braddon a quarter of voters gave the party their first preference.

Like One Nation, high votes for the Lambie Network were correlated with low socioeconomic ranking.

Low education levels also correlated with high Lambie votes.

Reflecting Senator Lambie's calls for more regulation around halal certification, votes for her party were lower in areas where high numbers identified their religion as Islam.

Similarly, the senator's policies to support Indigenous people appear to have resulted in a higher vote in areas where Indigenous Tasmanians live.

About the data