13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 70 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com THE TRENDS IN VICTORIA CAN REASONABLY BE APPLIED TO AUSTRALIA AS Ab bWHOLE. Anthony Fowler
– 2013
Department of Government, Harvard University. Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia Quarterly
Journal of Political Science, 2013, 8: 159
–182. These findings from 1877 and 1899 demonstrate a large degree of turnout inequality in Australia before the adoption of compulsory voting. Due
to the lack of available data, these findings cannot be replicated outside of Victoria or Bendigo. However, we have no reason to suspect that turnout inequality was unique to these regions of Australia. Contemporary electoral reports indicate that turnout and registration rates in Bendigo were similar with other municipalities in Victoria and Victoria was comparable with other states in Australia.
This analysis constitutes,
to my knowledge, the first and only possible analysis of individual-level voting behavior in Australia before compulsory voting.
Acknowledging the limitations, I take these results as evidence of a larger phenomenon across Australia.
