I’ve got yet another chapter in the long story of Australians’ changing habits in voting. With the final results of the Tasmanian state election, we can look at the Tasmanian trend.
The last Tasmanian state election was held in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, and saw a big increase in pre-poll votes, and a slight increase in postal votes.
The 2024 result didn’t see any reversion to pre-COVID trends. Instead there was a slight continuation. Ordinary voting dropped from 66.5% to 64%, and there was also a drop in the out of division votes from 5.1% to 4.2%. That means the election day vote dropped below 70% for the first time.
Tasmania has been lagging behind other states when it comes to the shift away from election day voting and towards early voting, but it is still undoubtedly heading in the same direction. Perhaps other states which have much higher rates of early voting will see some kind of rebound, but I don’t expect to see a big reversal.
In the case of the Brisbane City election, we did see a small rebound for election day voting, but pre-poll voting held its vote share despite that rebound.
