Source : the age
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Australians are literally voting with their feet, lining up at early voting centres across the country to get the 2025 election out of their lives.
At the same time, they’re making life more difficult for both major parties, which will still be announcing policies at the end of next week. It also means people are making a decision without knowing the total cost of each party’s policies – information typically released in the final week of a campaign.
People cast their votes at a polling booth at Holy Family Parish church in Maidstone, Melbourne.Credit: Jason South
A record 542,000 people, or 3 per cent of those on the electoral roll, cast a ballot on the first day of pre-poll voting on Tuesday. It was a 72 per cent increase on the 314,000 who cast a vote on the first day of pre-polling at the 2022 election.
Every state and territory recorded a steep rise in early voting. In NSW, more than 166,000 of the 5.7 million people on the roll voted, while 143,200 people in Victoria cast a ballot.
One of the biggest turnouts relative to size was in WA, where almost 60,000 people voted. That is a 115 per cent jump on the number of West Australians who voted on the opening day of the 2022 election.
In the seats of Fisher, Hinkler, Gilmore, Fowler and Gippsland, almost 5 per cent of all voters cast a ballot on Tuesday.
The Australian Electoral Commission reported about 19,000 votes have been cast with mobile voting teams, while 2.2 million postal votes have been distributed.
At the 2022 poll, just 46 per cent of votes were actually cast on election day, as Australians continue to embrace the opportunity to vote early at a time that is more convenient than the 10 hours polling booths are open on election day.
If the first-day rush of voters is anything to go by, there will be lots of uneaten snags at the election-day sausage sizzles as Australians go about their business rather than heading to a polling booth.
The huge increase in early voting has substantial ramifications for the major parties and individual candidates.
On Wednesday, Peter Dutton rolled out his plan to increase defence spending by $21 billion by the end of this decade. But that major announcement came too late to affect the decision of the half-million voters who have already cast a ballot.
Both major parties expected an increase in early voting. It was one of the reasons both formally launched their campaigns just a fortnight into the campaign, much earlier than in previous elections. But the sheer size of Tuesday’s vote has caught them by surprise.
For candidates, the early voting means spreading limited resources in the chase for votes.
One independent MP has a roster of between 200 and 300 volunteers to help staff the various pre-poll booths in their electorate. Many volunteers are doubling up, spending a few hours handing out how-to-vote leaflets, then coming back to the office to answer phones among other tasks.
On May 3, the same (and more) volunteers will be on all booths, catering for a shrinking number of voters.
As Australian National University academic Jill Sheppard notes, in a country where voting is compulsory, the electoral commission goes out of its way to make the process as painless as possible.
“For voters who are compelled to vote for parties and candidates who they are increasingly not that fond of, early voting is a godsend,” she notes.
The first day of pre-polling for the 2025 election suggests voters are taking this godsend to heart.
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