Database reveals voter perceptions of political parties

A political scientist says Australia has witnessed a progressive drop in voters’ trust in political parties, as seen across many developed nations around the world.

Charles Darwin University political science lecturer Dr Andrew Klassen said trust in Australian political parties has continued to decline for at least two decades.

Dr Klassen said a recent survey showed trust in Australian political parties was at about 13 per cent in 2012. He said the statistic had a confidence interval of 1.7 per cent.

“In a globalised world, political parties and politicians don’t have as much control over international and economic factors as they might have had decades ago,” he said.

“They still speak with confidence on these issues to get votes but are often unable to deliver, which could be one reason for a drop in public confidence.”

Dr Klassen said the most recent surveys showed New Zealand voters’ trust in political parties was slightly higher than Australians’, at 17 per cent with a confidence interval of 2.6 per cent in 2011.

In the United Kingdom, trust in political parties was about 19 per cent with a confidence interval of 1.6 per cent in 2014.

Dr Klassen made the observation while working to organise more than 300 cross-national surveys, encompassing more than 7.4 million people across 157 countries, into a widely available research tool.

He said the “Public Opinions and Perceptions” tool would allow users to analyse and compare surveys from across the world on a range of topics, including electoral fairness, trust in political parties, and satisfaction with democracy.

“We are operating in very outdated political systems and need to re-evaluate how political institutions are designed for today’s context,” Dr Klassen said.

He made his observations about Australia based on data from the Waves 3, 5, and 6 of the World Values Survey, Wave 6 of the survey data for New Zealand, and Round 7 of the European Social Survey for the UK.