The recent NSW state election saw a continuation of the long-term trend of less and less people casting ordinary election-day votes. In addition, in 2015 we saw the trend of increasing numbers of voters casting absentee votes or postal votes reversed, with those categories of voting becoming less popular, as pre-poll voting and iVote continue to increase in popularity. For this analysis, I’ve been able to collect the figures on how many people voted using each different type of voting at every election since 1999. In 1999, 84.6% of votes were cast as ordinary election-day votes. In 2015, this number dropped to 67.2%. In raw numbers, there has been a drop of 168,282 ordinary votes cast, despite the total number of votes cast increasing by 742,743. http://cf.datawrapper.de/oAmRU/1/ As you can see, there was a slight decline in the proportion of ordinary votes from 84.6% in 1999 to 81.1% in 2007, although the raw numbers increased during this time. This trend has accelerated significantly since 2007, dropping to 74.2% in 2011 and 67.2% in 2015. Below the fold, I’ll show how those people who aren’t casting ordinary votes are now voting, and how that has shifted over time. We’ve seen the acceleration of a trend that has seen large numbers of people cast absentee, postal and pre-poll votes, and how big surges in absentee and postal votes in 2011 have ebbed away while pre-poll voting continues to increase in size. Ben Raue | April 22, 2015 at 1:46 pm | Tags: New South Wales 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/ppI95-6QU
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