Partisan stability and short‐term change in the 1987 federal election: Evidence from the NSSS panel survey

Abstract

This article brings new evidence to bear on two old questions and two new ones. First, we analyse cross‐sectional voting patterns in the five federal elections between 1977 and 1987. We find that the effects of class and party remain remarkably stable over this decade, which suggests that the much touted decline of class from World War II into the 1970s may have bottomed out by the 1980s. Second, we show that individual voting patterns are also remarkably stable, if anything more stable than in the 1960s; there is no sign of the increase in electoral volatility found in other English speaking countries. Third, we analyse changes over the last parliament, between‐the 1984 and 1987 elections. We find that changes in voters’ views in this period are influenced mainly by changes in their opinion of the key political leaders, not by their class, ideology, or opinions on the issues of the day. Finally, we investigate what would have happened if the opposition's leaders had been as popular as Labor's. Our estimates imply that the opposition would probably then have won the election. These analyses are based on new data from the National Social Science Survey's 1987 Panel Survey, a representative national sample of 1311 cases in all states and territories.