Documenting the inevitable: Voting behaviour at the 2013 Australian election

This chapter uses data from the 2013 Australian Election Study (AES), conducted by Clive Bean, Ian McAllister, Juliet Pietsch and Rachel Gibson (Bean et al. 2014) to investigate political attitudes and voting behaviour in the election. The study was funded by the Australian Research Council and involved a national survey of political attitudes and behaviour using a self-completion questionnaire mailed to respondents on the day before the 7 September election. The sample was a systematic random sample of enrolled voters throughout Australia, drawn by the Australian Electoral Commission. Respondents were given the option of returning the completed questionnaire by reply-paid mail or completing the survey online. Non-respondents were sent several follow-up mailings and the final sample size was 3955, representing a response rate of 34 per cent. The data were weighted to reflect population parameters for gender, age, state and vote.