Australian National University-Griffith University, THE 2022 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION: Results from the Australian Election Study, released 5 December 2022, excerpts:
Executive Summary
This report presents findings from the 2022 Australian Election Study (AES). The AES surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,508 voters after the 2022 Australian federal election to find out what shaped their choices in the election. The AES has fielded representative surveys after every federal election since 1987, which allows these results to be placed in a long-term context. This report provides insights into what informed voting behaviour in the election and voters’ attitudes towards policy issues, the political leaders, and the functioning of Australian democracy generally.
The main findings are as follows:
Public policy and the economy
• A majority of voters (53 percent) cast their ballots
based on policy issues, down from 66 percent
in 2019.
• The most important issues in the election identified
by voters included the cost of living (32 percent),
environmental issues (17 percent), management of
the economy (15 percent), and health (14 percent).
• Voters preferred Labor’s policies on the cost of
living, education, health, and the environment.
• Voters preferred the Coalition’s policies on
management of the economy, taxation, and national
security. The Coalition’s advantage in economic
policy areas was significantly reduced since 2019.
• Evaluations of the national economy were worse in
2022 than in any election since 1990. Two thirds of
voters reported that the national economy became
worse over the past year. [my yellow highlighting]
Leaders
• Anthony Albanese was evaluated more favourably
than any political party leader since Kevin Rudd in
2007, scoring 5.3 on a zero to 10 popularity scale.
[my yellow highlighting]
• With Anthony Albanese as party leader, Labor
attracted more votes based on leadership than in
the 2016 and 2019 elections.
• Scott Morrison became the least popular major
party leader in the history of the AES, scoring 3.8
on a zero to 10 popularity scale, down from 5.1 in the
2019 election. [my yellow highlighting]
• Anthony Albanese was evaluated more favourably
than Scott Morrison in eight of nine leader
characteristics, with the biggest differences
in perceptions of honesty, trustworthiness,
and compassion.
The ‘Teal’ independents
• Political partisanship for the major parties reached
record lows in 2022. The proportion of voters that
always vote the same way is also at a record low
(37 percent). This growing detachment from the
major political parties provided the conditions that
supported the Teals’ success.
Most Teal voters were not ‘disaffected Liberals’, but
tactical Labor and Greens voters. Less than one in
five Teal voters previously voted for the Coalition.
[my yellow highlighting]
• On average, Teal voters are ideologically close to
Labor voters – placing themselves just left of centre
on a zero to 10 left-right scale (Teal mean: 4.4; Labor
mean: 4.3).
Socio-demographic influences on the vote
• Men were more likely to vote for the Coalition than
women (men: 38 percent; women: 32 percent).
Women were more likely than men to vote for Labor
and the Greens. This represents a longer-term
reversal of the gender gap in voter behaviour, since
the 1990s women have shifted to the left and men
to the right in their party preferences.
• Since 2019, the Coalition lost support from both
men and women. [my yellow highlighting]
• There are major generational differences in voter
behaviour. The Coalition has very little support
among Millennials and Generation Z. The Coalition’s
share of the vote fell in almost every age group, but
especially among the youngest cohorts of voters.
[my yellow highlighting]
• The self-identified working class remain more
likely to vote Labor (38 percent) than the Coalition
(33 percent).
• Since 2019 the Coalition has lost support among
university-educated and higher income voters.
[my yellow highlighting]
The COVID-19 pandemic
• Overall, Australians evaluated the performance of
the federal government’s handling the pandemic
more negatively than their state government.
[my yellow highlighting]
Around half (51 percent) thought their state
government handled the pandemic well, compared
to 30 percent who thought the Commonwealth
government handled the pandemic well.
• There are major differences across states – in
Tasmania and Western Australia 75 percent
thought the state government handled the
pandemic well, compared to just 36 percent
in Victoria.
• Among those who thought the federal government
handled the pandemic badly, only 12 percent
voted for the Coalition, while 42 percent voted
Labor and almost one third voted for a minor party
or independent
• A majority of Australians thought the pandemic
had negative impacts on social cohesion or
inclusiveness (64 percent) and individual
rights and freedoms (54 percent). One third of
Australians reported that the pandemic had
negatively affected their personal economic
circumstances. Only a small minority of
Australians believed the pandemic had positive
impacts for Australian society.
Preferred party policies
The major parties have long-term electoral
advantages in different policy areas (see Figure 1.4).
The AES asked voters for the same 11 issues, “whose
policies – the Labor Party’s or the Liberal-National
Coalition’s –would you say come closer to your own
views on each of these issues?” The Coalition holds
an advantage as the preferred party on management
of the economy, national security, and taxation. Labor,
on the other hand, is well ahead as the preferred
party on global warming, the environment, health,
education, and the cost of living. As nearly one-third
of the electorate considered the cost of living to be
the most important issue in the 2022 election, in
principle this benefitted Labor. The management of
the economy benefitted the Coalition.
Although there are fluctuations from election to
election, overall voters’ preferences for one party
over the other on these policy areas have remained
constant over time. Of note in 2022 compared to 2019
is the larger proportion of voters who said there was
‘no difference’ between the parties on salient issues
in the campaign. In 2022 an average of 25 percent
of voters said there was ‘no difference’ between
the parties compared to 19 percent in 2019. Voting
in the 2022 election was clearly less policy-driven
than in recent elections. Another notable shift is that
the Coalition has lost their advantage over Labor on
immigration and refugees, and their advantage on
management of the economy and taxation is much
reduced since 2019. [my yellow highlighting]
Climate change
The 2019-2020 bushfires and the 2021-2022 floods
affected significant proportions of the population
and brought home to voters in the most dramatic way
the effects of climate change. This is reflected in
the significant increase in the proportions of voters
mentioning global warming as the most important
election issue (see Figure 1.5). In 2019 and 2022,
10 percent mentioned global warming as the most
important election issue compared to 4 percent in
2013 and 2016. Mentions of the environment show a
long-term increase, albeit with a slight decline from
11 percent in 2019 to 7 percent in 2022.
While not everyone sees the environment as their
top election concern, there is a broad group who
are concerned about climate change. Nearly half
of all voters see global warming as ‘extremely
important’, with only around one in four seeing it as
‘not very important’ (see Figure 1.6). However, there
are substantial party differences in these views.
[my yellow highlighting]
Almost six in 10 Labor voters see global warming as
‘extremely important’ compared to less than one in
four Coalition voters. As we would expect, the vast
majority of Greens voters—80 percent—see global
warming as ‘extremely important’. A large majority
of all voters see global warming as being either
‘extremely important’ or ‘quite important’.
The economy
Following the lockdowns related to the pandemic
and the associated decline in economic activity,
the Australian economy recovered in 2021-2022,
with unemployment declining to historic lows and a
significant increase in economic growth. However,
the government was left with major debt because
of the economic subsides put in place to shield
businesses and individuals from the pandemic, and
inflation has jumped to levels not seen in decades.
As a result, voters took a very pessimistic view of the
performance of the national economy in 2022, with
two-thirds saying that it had become worse over the
previous year (Figure 1.7), a figure only surpassed in
1990 during the recession of the early 1990s.
TRENDS IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL OPINION: Results from the Australian Election Study 1987– 2022 can be read or downloaded at:
THE 2022 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION: Results from the Australian Election Study can be read or downloaded at:
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