Welcome to the 2020 ANUSA elections. Throughout voting next week, I’ll be collecting data on the number of votes and the time votes are logged. I’m excited to bring you this information and I hope that it’ll be of interest.
In the meantime, what does past data say about voter turnout?
The timeseries is very sparse because the data is from ANUSA’s current voting system provider, Membership Solutions Limited (MSL), whose product has only been in use since 2016. Before that, ANUSA voting was conducted on paper ballots in the Union Building — the heart of Union Court, Kambri’s predecessor. The 2016 election was a physical-online hybrid and in 2017, the process went entirely online.
The voter turnout for the 2017 election was heralded as the biggest in years. The probity report that year triumphantly claimed that it was the “largest turnout in recent memory — and perhaps, ever.”
In my opinion, there are a couple of factors that may go to explain that near-unassailable 19.11% turnout in 2017.
The first of these is that the 2017 ANUSA elections were fiercely contested with which came more campaigning and intrigue. Amongst a scattered field of tickets, that election season saw a heated race between Eleanor Kay’s “Lift” ticket and Cameron Allan’s “Shake Up” for control of the executive — the six salaried elected positions in ANUSA. This year’s elections look to be the first since then to have more than one nominee vying for each executive position.
The second reason may stem from the fact that 2017 was also the last year of Union Court before it was roped off it late May to be demolished.
While there isn’t enough data to make a conclusive determination, the number of likes that ANUSA’s Facebook posts received over the last few years suggests that there was less engagement during the reconstruction period. The number of Facebook reactions is not usually considered the best metric to measure user engagement — however, in this case, the number of comments or shares per post is not particularly illuminating since those numbers tend to be quite low.
It is interesting that both Facebook engagement and voter turnout were relatively low in 2018, bookended by higher levels in 2017 and 2019.
The trendline has taken a sharp downturn since the start of this year. Again, there isn’t enough data to say that this will result in a markedly lower voter turnout. However, it is an interesting metric to keep in mind for next week’s elections.
Lachy Day, current ANUSA President, suggested that the reason the trendline has dipped downwards may be because “[ANUSA] has prioritised sharing posts to Schmidtposting rather than [the ANUSA Facebook] page. Student engagement, while down online, has been solidly increasing in terms of student assistance appointments and general service provision engagement.”
Next week’s results may offer more insight into these dynamics. However, these elections will also be very different from past elections because of Covid-19. Many undergraduate students are not on campus anymore — in another state or country — and a sizeable chunk of undergraduate courses have little or no in-person teaching, reducing the amount of foot traffic that student politicians have usually sought after to campaign. Campaigning, like most things this year, will probably be taken online to an unprecedented degree.
The 2020 ANUSA elections are shaping up to be one of a kind.
