The Coup Capital of the Democratic World? Voters and Prime Ministerial Change in Australia

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Cameron, Sarah
McAllister, Ian
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2023
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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.

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Australian Journal of Politics and History

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DP210101517

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© 2023 The Authors. Australian Journal of Politics & History published by The University of Queensland and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advanced online version.

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Australian government and politics

Historical studies

Policy and administration

Political science

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Social Sciences

History

Government & Law

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Cameron, S; McAllister, I, The Coup Capital of the Democratic World? Voters and Prime Ministerial Change in Australia, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 2023

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