convenience voting

Early Voting at Queensland Elections and its Political Impact

As a Covid-19 measure, the Electoral Commission Queensland (ECQ) is encouraging electors to vote early in 2020. This means the Queensland election will see a record rate of votes cast before the traditional polling day on 31 October.

While the overall early voting rates will be exaggerated by the circumstances of holding an election under Covid-19 precautions, the switch to early voting continues a trend that has been accelerating over the last decade.

This post looks at Queensland elections since 1986, how and when people have voted, as well as the differing levels of party support by vote type at the 2017 state election.Read More »Early Voting at Queensland Elections and its Political Impact

Tracking the Pre-Poll Vote for the ACT Election

In this post I’ll track the rate of pre-poll voting for the 2020 ACT Election compared to 2016. The ACT Electoral Commission is actively encouraging pre-poll voting as a Covid-19 measure.

I’ll graph the data inside the post.

Day 19 – The final day of pre-polling, Friday 16 October, saw a huge surge with 26,804 votes taken. This brings the total number of pre-poll votes to 192,186 from a roll of 302,630, representing 63.5% of enrolment. Around 90% of these pre-poll votes were taken electronically and will be released in the count on Saturday night.

Another 22,328 electors have applied for a postal vote, putting the pre-election day voting rate up above 70%.

Several notes to make. First, late and polling day enrolment are allowed in the ACT so the roll number will rise slightly. Secondly, not all postal votes will be returned. Third, it is estimated around 80,000 Canberrans will vote in the traditional way today, Saturday 17 October.Read More »Tracking the Pre-Poll Vote for the ACT Election

2020 Northern Territory Election – Tracking the Early Vote

In this post I will keep track of the surging rate of early voting ahead of the Northern Territory election’s formal polling day on 22 August.

After the last day of early voting on Friday 21 August

  • In total 75,537 votes have been recorded in advance of polling. This total includes all pre-polls, remote mobile votes and postal votes returned to date. The total in 2016 was 51,155. The 2020 total will increase as more postal votes return in the two weeks allowed after polling day. Already the 2020 figure represents a 48% increase on the early voting in 2016.
  • The total early votes currently represents 53.5% of enrolment. Given turnout is generally around 75%, that means roughly 70% of all votes to be counted have been completed before election day.
  • The breakdown at the end of voting was Pre-poll 60,292 (42.7%), Remote Mobile 12,019 (8.5%) (this might include on the day mobile votes) and returned Postals 3,953 (2.8%). A total of 10,242 (7.3%) of voters had been sent a postal vote pack, though not all will be used or returned in time.

Read More »2020 Northern Territory Election – Tracking the Early Vote