August 2013 Update: Youth Federal Election Voting Intentions

The health of Australian democracy and its constituent parts (citizens, political parties, parliament and civil society) have been subject to growing debate for some years. This concern has escalated further with the 2010 Federal election resulting in the first minority Federal government since the successive Menzies, Fadden and Curtin governments during the war years (1940-43). The focus of these deliberations shifts constantly. For many their attention is directed towards political organisation (the decline of political party membership; party structures and rules; campaigns), electoral matters (voter demographics, voting patterns and voter behaviours) and the implications for government (the rise of Independents or minor parties — most recently the Greens — as well as Parliamentary practices). For others the core issue is citizenship which encompasses political and civic participation as well as questions of alternative democratic models. These in turn canvass a further layer of possibilities: direct democracy, deliberative democracy, distributed or networked governance. Recent scholarship attempts to come to grips with the changing democratic realities and the inter-play between formal ‘Politics’ and informal ‘politics’ of the everyday (Saha et al, 2007; Norris, 2004; Bang, 2004). The authors would agree that there is a quite fundamental shift underway. They have tentatively concluded previously that the political behaviours and attitudes they were discerning among young people were not generationally exclusive but rather that young people might be understood as providing a lead indicator of developments among the broader population. The analysis of voter intention survey data over five Federal elections from 1996 through to 2010 (Brooker, 2011) added further weight to that conclusion. The update to Brooker’s 2011 report that follows extends that analysis.