Launch of Australian Election Study Interactive Data

Launch of Australian Election Study Interactive Data
Monday 25 June 2018

Professor Ian McAllister of the ANU School of Politics and International Relations and Dr Sarah Cameron (recent alumna) have launched an interactive online tool to explore the Australian Election Study data from 1987 to 2016. The tool shows trends in Australian political opinion over time and enables the user to explore these trends by age group, gender, education level, and vote choice. The online tool is intended as a resource for those who teach, research, and study Australian politics, as well as journalists and members of the public. It makes the tremendous volume of public opinion data collected by the Australian Election Study over the past 30 years accessible to a broad audience.

Exploring the tool reveals stark differences in political attitudes across the population. It shows that men are a good deal more interested in politics than women, older people are more interested than younger people, and there are also big differences in political interest based on respondents’ education level. Another chart shows that whilst Australians as a whole have moved further to the left over the past 20 years, this shift to the left has been particularly stark amongst young people, and to a lesser extent, women. There are also considerable differences in policy attitudes, for example older people and men have been a lot more supportive of the war on terrorism than younger people and women, respectively. Almost 100 charts are included, and each has its own story to tell about shifts over time in political attitudes, as well as differences between subgroups of the population.

The charts cover attitudes towards: the election campaign; voting and partisanship; election issues; the economy; politics and political parties; the left-right dimension; the political leaders; democracy and institutions; trade unions, business and wealth; social issues; and defence and foreign affairs. The tool was produced with support from Small Multiples.

To explore the data online visit www.australianelectionstudy.org/charts.html.

The accompanying report Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study 1987-2016 can be downloaded here. For those who would like to recreate the charts, the excel data underlying the charts can be downloaded here.

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Updated:  25 June 2018/Responsible Officer:  Head of School/Page Contact:  CASS Marketing & Communications