Think this election’s ageing voter problem was bad? It’s only going to get worse

Think this election’s ageing voter problem was bad? It’s only going to get worse

There’s been a variety of reasons offered for why the number of informal votes among ageing Australians has almost tripled, but each one fails as an explanation.

Turnout is up, and election day is down

We are now getting to the point in the election count where all of the primary votes appear to have been counted. We don’t have all the preference data yet – Bradfield is obviously still in play, the two-party-preferred count is not quite complete, and we don’t have 3CP or distribution of preferences data outside of Calwell. But now that we know how many votes were cast, we can analyse the level of turnout, and how many people voted early, and v…