PROJECT 4 – Australia : 1977-1980

Project 4 – Part One

Introduction:

Projects two and three have provided a demographic analysis of variations in the Labor vote from 1966 to 1977, using the 1971 Census data and the 1968 boundaries.

In 1976 a national census was taken which for the first time included questions dealing with income. In 1977 there was a distribution of electorates and a national election, followed by another national election in 1980.

It was resolved to analyse the 1977 and 1980 election results using the 1976 census data which had been allocated by the Bureau of Statistics on to the 1977 electoral boundaries.

Click to continue reading: Project4 – Part One

Project 4  – Part Two

Extract from Chapter entitled “Australia” by Dr Marian Simms, Canberra College of Advanced Education, to be published in J.Hills and J. Lavenduski (eds). The Politics of the Second Electorate: Women and Public Participation, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1981.

1. Are women more conservative than men?

Senator Susan Ryan (1979, p.3) while calling for the ALP to take positive steps to appeal to the women voters decried the face that their support for Labor had ‘lagged several percent behind’ that of men.

In order to examine her statement and ascertain recent tendencies I look at 36 Age Polls from March 1971 to April 1979, to try and map this difference between the sexes in their support for the ALP. I wanted to see whether we could detect any pattern: were the differences increasing or decreasing?

Click to continue reading:  Project 4 – Part Two