Early voting, election campaigning and party advantage in Australia

There has been an international trend in recent years towards voters casting an early ballot. In the 2016 Australian federal election almost one in three votes were cast in this way, most of them in person using pre-polling centres. This trend towards early voting raises both normative and practical questions about the purpose of election campaigns and how they are conducted, as well as what party advantage may be gained from the process. This paper applies multivariate analysis to the 2016 Australian Election Study to test four hypotheses related to early voting. The results show that early voters have less trust in politics and are less likely to participate in the election. There are small but consistent electoral advantages to be gained from early voters for the Liberal-National Coalition.