{"title":"The Coup Capital of the Democratic World? Voters and Prime Ministerial Change in Australia","authors":"Sarah Cameron, Ian McAllister","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12890","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Between 2010 and 2018, Australia saw four sitting prime ministers deposed by their own parties, giving the country the title “the coup capital of the democratic world”. In this paper, we use Australian Election Study surveys and commercial opinion poll data to analyse what voters thought of these changes and whether they lifted the electoral fortunes of their respective parties. The results suggest that voters' views of the changes depended on the popularity of the leader in question, but that a desire to see better economic performance reinforced support for a change in prime minister. There is little evidence that opinion polls played a role in any of the changes, at least for voters. There is also no evidence that the changes improved the subsequent vote for each of the parties that changed a prime minister; indeed, in three of the four cases the party vote declined significantly following the change.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajph.12890","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajph.12890","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Between 2010 and 2018, Australia saw four sitting prime ministers deposed by their own parties, giving the country the title “the coup capital of the democratic world”. In this paper, we use Australian Election Study surveys and commercial opinion poll data to analyse what voters thought of these changes and whether they lifted the electoral fortunes of their respective parties. The results suggest that voters' views of the changes depended on the popularity of the leader in question, but that a desire to see better economic performance reinforced support for a change in prime minister. There is little evidence that opinion polls played a role in any of the changes, at least for voters. There is also no evidence that the changes improved the subsequent vote for each of the parties that changed a prime minister; indeed, in three of the four cases the party vote declined significantly following the change.
期刊介绍:
The Australian Journal of Politics and History presents papers addressing significant problems of general interest to those working in the fields of history, political studies and international affairs. Articles explore the politics and history of Australia and modern Europe, intellectual history, political history, and the history of political thought. The journal also publishes articles in the fields of international politics, Australian foreign policy, and Australia relations with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.