Graham Richardson, the legendary Labor numbers man, pronounced last week that “if I was religious, I would pray that my long-held view that Labor will be slaughtered under Gillard’s leadership would be…
Often at the centre of electoral debate, what role do marginal seats have to play in this year’s election?
AAP/Stefan Postles
In an election year, perhaps the only thing more inevitable than the major parties’ verbal jousting is the media’s obsession with marginal seats – that handful of bellwether electorates that can supposedly…
When it comes to the polls, FIFO workers are most likely to vote for the party which will support their industry.
Wesfarmers
In Western Australia business is booming for the mining and resources sector. The number of fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers employed in the state has increased over the last five years to more than 35,000…
Follow the money: the US may not be perfect, but Australian campaign finance laws need tightening.
EPA/Erik S. Lesser
In the run-up to today’s presidential election, President Barack Obama received just over $632 million in candidate contributions. Want to know who from? These direct, individual donations (known as “hard…
The stage is set for the Romney/Ryan election night event in Boston, Massachusetts.
EPA/Matt Campbell
It is now election day in the United States. You can compare being on an American political campaign on this final frenetic day to spawning salmon giving their all to leap waterfalls before they die. Media…
Volunteers work the phones to “get out the vote” for the Romney/Ryan campaign in Virginia.
EPA/Shawn Thew
Hurricane Sandy will leave more than physical destruction in its wake. Arriving just days before the US presidential election, the storm could have a political fallout as well. Sandy has affected the key…
Some young people aren’t as disinterested in others in politics. Why is that?
Flickr/Adam Scotti
History will be made when Scots vote in October 2014 on whether their country should take independence from the United Kingdom. This has nothing to do with the outcome of the vote: the very fact that 16…
Voters in Florida casting their votes through electronic voting, introduced in the wake of 2000’s “hanging chad” controversy.
EPA/Rhona Wise
Elections in the United States are run by state authorites that use a wide variety of voting technologies, often with newsworthy results. Some computerised elections have even awarded the election to the…
Locked out: many Americans may find it harder to cast their vote in the upcoming presidential elections in November.
EPA/Jay Laprete
With Mitt Romney getting only a small bounce from the Republican National Convention, the polls are currently showing a virtual dead heat between Romney and President Barack Obama just eight weeks from…
Australians are more dissatisfied with the way democracy works now than they were after the Rudd government was elected, a poll has found. According to the ANU poll of 2001 people, there has been a 13…
The ballot paper was an Australian innovation.
AAP
One hundred and fifty years ago, the South Australian House of Assembly handed down the report of its first committee into the running of elections. Its main purpose was to find the causes of two troubling…
Politicians would do well to ask the people for their views on climate change.
AAP/Greg Wood
The conduct of the Australian climate change debate was probably not what John Maynard Keynes had in mind when he proclaimed “words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the…