And so, the election analyses continue.
Many valid points have been made, about why the ALP won, why the Coalition lost, why the Greens did so well, why the so-called “teals” emerged, why the Liberal moderates were shown the exit door, why Western Australia turned on the Government, and so on. Bob Day of the Australian Family Party (and formerly of Family First), suggested three reasons for the abandonment of the Liberals (the Nationals didn’t lose any seats, as per other recent elections). He called them “family, faith and freedom”.
But there is another story about the election of 2022, the post-Covid election. It is the phenomenally low voter turnout. To use the most overused phrase of our time, it was, indeed, “unprecedented”. Well, since compulsory voting was introduced down under in 1924. As Adam Piggott at Pushing Rubber Downhill and XYZ points out:
The media is comprehensively ignoring this subject, but even a cursory examination of the stats released by the Australian Electoral Commission reveals that over 30% of registered voters boycotted the 2022 federal election.
Political life is not just the vote - XYZ
These incredible numbers from the Australian Electoral Commission, in which the turnout for 2022 electorate by electorate is described by the author as “astonishing”, are arresting, to say the least. A few seats suffice to get the point:
Electorate, Turnout %, Enrolled, Marked Off, Turnout % Relative to 2019
Melbourne 61.4 114447 70270 -28.22
Sydney 61.83 125421 77550 -24.47
Brisbane 62.46 125241 78223 -28.05
Perth 62.63 122719 76856 -26.9
These numbers are over the cliff since 2019. The analysis is comprehensive, and it shows similar trends right across the nation. As the writer comments, “not a single electorate isn’t impacted”.
Somebody had better say something about this because this is historic, and if no explanation is offered people are going to start theorising about the election.
I cross referenced the turnout numbers against the voting numbers. They’re identical and those turnout numbers are up to date, seats like Moreton are 100% counted are reporting only 65% turnout.
What has happened since 2019? The Covid State, put simply. The crushing of freedom and rights. The trashing of the Federation. The destruction of the small business economy. Nothing else of moment has happened in the life of the last parliament. Nobody but nobody is talking about this in the Covid class or the political class more broadly.
The writer concludes:
My theory: unvaccinated and covid state power aggrieved people boycotted the election.
They have created millions of militant activists who now reject the entire system.
Guest Post – Twostix – How many voters boycotted the Fed Election 2022 ? – New Catallaxy
What if four million people boycotted the whole thing?
What is indicated for future tax compliance, for example? Civil disobedience? Taking the American conservative Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option or Brendan Moloney’s parallel society movement (opting out of a repugnant polity)? The whole liberal democratic settlement based on the liberal political philosopher John Locke’s consent of the governed might well be up for grabs. When do citizens reach the point where they no longer believe they have a stake in the system? When they believe they have lost everything. Their jobs. Their careers. Their businesses. Their right to a place in “civilised”, Covid-embracing society.
It is certainly a theory. And no one is talking about it. Not ScoMo, or his successors. Not Albo. Not the Greens. Not the “teals”. Not the Covid-propagandising media. Those who did talk about it – George Christensen and Craig Kelly, for example, were politically ostracised and sneered at by the media.
The estimable John Stapleton at A Sense of Place magazine has penned a compelling new book on the Canberra Convoy. Stapleton chronicled the Australian trucker movement that so discombobulated the Canberra-based Covid class. Perhaps there IS a new movement emerging, based on a sense of totally lost engagement with the “official” political system. And it could get ugly for the ruling class, if the deplorables have just had enough. These are real events and developments, not merely the rantings of the whacko classes and fringe dwellers gone feral.
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/convoy-to-canberra/
Piggott begins his article thus – “Australia has voted. Or has it?” A good question.
Back in May 2019, following the previous election, the Sydney Morning Herald did a story on that election’s “record” low turnout:
Scott Morrison's government has been elected with one of the lowest voter turnouts since the advent of compulsory voting as the nation's young turned their back on democracy after enrolling in droves for the same-sex marriage postal survey.
A special breakdown of voting figures from the May 18 poll suggests less than 91 per cent of people cast a ballot, formal or informal.
One can only wonder what the SMH writers would say about the 2022 democratic bloodbath, with non-voting probably three times greater than the previous election. The 2019 story was partly about young voter and inner-city disengagement. This time it is about utter despair at the political class across the board. Not just the young, disengaged. Not just the inner-city types. In 2019, the lowest casting of valid ballots (thus excluding both informal votes and non-voters added together) was in the Sydney seat of Blaxland, at 70 per cent. This year, that is what the whole nation’s voting behaviour looks like.
These numbers are, indeed, pretty arresting, and cast a different light on the state of disillusion among the people that the seemingly disappointing numbers who voted for the FFMPs (freedom friendly minor parties) might hide. When you add the votes for the right-of-centre minor parties to the informals and then to the enrolled voters who just didn’t turn up, and then to all those who should have enrolled (newly turned eighteens) but haven’t, you are getting up there.
A number of commentators have already noted that the new ALP Government slithered into office (still short of an outright parliamentary majority at the time of writing) with around 32 per cent of the primary vote. As Mark Moncrieff, again at XYZ, has noted:
In this election (Labor) won 32.8% of the first preference votes out of those who voted. 23% of those enrolled to vote and 15.33% of all Australians.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) population clock:
‘On 24 May 2022 at 09:16:47 PM (Canberra time), the resident population of Australia is projected to be:
25, 896, 010
Last Saturday the number of people enrolled to vote was:
17, 228, 900
The number who actually voted was:
12, 756, 111
The Australian Labor Party won office with this number of first preference votes:
3,972,105
Some Thoughts On The Australian Election, 2022 - XYZ
Mandate, anyone? Democracy? I just hope I never hear any of Albo’s ministers claiming a mandate for anything. Just because a few bourgeois tree-hugging middle-aged females got lucky with the laptop class of the inner cities, I trust no one in Canberra thinks they have a right to destroy the economy with Canute style “hold back the temperatures” measures. I realise they will do it anyway (a little like the political class did with Covid measures), but it is important that they know that we know that they have no right to do so.
But when you add the informals, also, to some extent, a traditional measure of disgruntlement, and this extraordinary phenomenon of simply not turning up to vote, you get a very clear picture of the state of the nation. Is this what happens when we hate them all?
The 32 per cent numbers for Albo blows out of the water any remaining argument for preferential voting. We have almost arrived at first-past-the-post type outcomes with these numbers. And the huge non turnout just about kills off the argument for compulsory voting. The huge increase over recent years in pre-poll voting, whatever else it might say about electoral behaviour, seems only to add to the great sense of disengagement abroad.
So, the FFMPs should not feel too disappointed, at their first real outing at mass politics. Here is Moncrieff again:
On the Right we put a lot of faith in One Nation, Pauline Hanson’s Party and the United Australia Party. Together they got around 1.1 million votes, 589,896 for One Nation, 499,631 for the United Australia Party. Unlike Labor and the Liberals whose share of the vote went down both parties’ votes went up. After the past two years it was disappointing to not see a bigger share go to them.
Labor, four million. The Freedom Parties, over one million. Not too bad, methinks. But yes, the “Uniparty”, aka the Lib-Lab Duopoly, does always win elections, and so run (and ruin) our lives. There is still much thinking and smart work to be done to figure out how to get better outcomes from a rigged system.
It is notoriously difficult to guess why people vote the way they do. Especially at the individual level. The whole sub-branch of political science that explores electoral behaviour has been investigating voting behaviour for half a century at least, without definitive conclusions.
It is just as difficult to determine why people don’t vote.
Many theories might explain the emergence of the great non-voting class. A sense that the major parties and every government we get couldn’t give a fig about our welfare? I would say so. Despair at the propaganda, deceit and PR driven corporate politics? Yep. Disillusion at the cronyism and corruption of political life, executive overreach, the crushing of our freedoms because of a mild virus? You think? Recognition that the world is now run not by elected officials but by shady corporations and supra-national institutions? Getting warm. A sudden realisation of “what was THAT all about?” by voters who have noticed that at the onset of the election season (Canberra, New South Wales, Victoria), politicians of all hues have suddenly and without adequate explanation simply junked all the Covid rules, even though many people continue to get Covid, continue to be hospitalised, and continue to die “with” Covid? I would think, yes. Every one a highly plausible hypothesis.
The late American economist Anthony Downs’ theory of the “rationally ignorant” citizen – why would I invest in spending time researching whether and how to vote when I have far better things to do with my time – might also be a partial explanation of the low voter turnout figures quoted here. But is doesn’t explain why the turnout was massively lower this year in particular.
Perhaps the lack of energy and ennui in the electorate bespeaks something other than sheer anger. The angry probably did vote. Not for ScoMo or Albo, though. The rest simply didn’t show up. Lack of energy is perhaps the greatest manifestation there is for depression. And we know what Covid lockdowns and mandates have done to the mental health of Australians. To people gaslit, cowed and defeated. To people who believe, no, they know, that the political class only cares for its own comforts. Why would these millions of people bother? Well, they didn’t. Every last miserable member of the Commonwealth parliament should pause and quietly reflect upon what they have unleashed. Whatever the reason for individual non-voting the huge uptick in voting non-compliance since 2019 might best be seen as a giant middle finger to the political class.
I just wonder if the non-voters will be pursued and fined by the AEC. We can but hope not, for these accidental heroes have served a great purpose. They have demonstrated that the emperor hasn’t got a stitch on. Maybe the AEC will take a leaf out of the NSW Police Force book and refuse to punish those who seem to have indulged in a little Covid-related passive aggression.
Paul Collits
30 May 2022
I have a response from the National Civic Council in relation to your article. How do you respond to this?
"If you follow the figures daily, the number who have voted goes up as postals come in and are counted. We won’t know the final turnout for some weeks.
Currently, national turnout on the Senate page is 83.7%.
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-27966-NAT.htm
The final Senate count in 2019 was 92.5% turnout.
One further important point.
Election week there were approx 51,000 recorded covid cases per day, which means it may have been 70K per day. That means on election day somewhere between 360,000 and 490,000 individuals may have had covid and most been in 7 day isolation, plus members of their family also in isolation, which would multiply this number.
Flu cases were also rising.
Hospital capacities were full and there was a big increase in workplace sick leave.
While postal votes were offered to these people, many would not have applied due to illness and the late offer of postal voting. If they did apply, their votes may not have arrived in their letter box in time to vote.
If we could have expected about 8% (1.4m) not to turn out based on 2019 figures, then perhaps it would not be surprising if 16% did not, or could not, vote at this election given covid and flu situation.
Hope this is helpful."
Comment Please....
Thank you. The most perceptive and informative review I have seen. 4m non- voters + 1m freedom voters = 5m are ready for an alternative? We have the brains and the hearts to do this. Together with only one objective - Freedom from tyranny and enslavement. And it can only happen with cooperation. Well done Paul.