In today’s news of ‘things that could mean everything or nothing’, it turns out that an absolute shitload of you people have voted ahead of Saturday’s election. An unusually high number, in fact – the Australian Electoral Commission says that as of close of business on Tuesday, approximately 3 million people had voted.
As of COB Tuesday approximately 3m people had cast their vote at an early voting centre for the 2019 federal election. Around 400k voted yesterday. #ausvotes #auspol
— AEC ✏️ (@AusElectoralCom) May 14, 2019
That’s significant: at the 2016 election, only 1.82 million people had voted by this point.
This compares to a total of around 1.82m who had prepolled by this stage of the 2016 federal election #ausvotes #auspol
— AEC (@AusElectoralCom) May 14, 2019
What does this mean in practice? Who knows. But it indicates that a significant portion of the population has already made up their mind, and any last minute policy announcements or realignments are not going to matter at all for them. It’s entirely possible that the election itself has been more or less decided by this chunk of early voters, which adds up to about 18.2% of those eligible to vote.
There’s an argument to be made that the pre-poll process is being abused, and that many voters have lodged their votes with incomplete information. Technically, early voting is meant to be only available to those who cannot vote on Saturday for a legitimate reason, and it’s highly unlikely all 3 million people had legit reasons.
But also: if people are convinced enough to sort out an early vote, maybe that doesn’t matter! We all know it sucks to line up.
