Race and Power in Australia: not your grandfather's racism

Abstract

In this thesis I re-evaluate how the Australian electorate’s racial attitudes have implications for political behaviour and party competition. In the survey data I analyse I demonstrate racial out-group status organises a race-based dimension of political ideology. Racial ideology is predicted by biological inferiority, motivational and structural barrier explanations for Aboriginal disadvantage, as well as, ethnocentrism, and authoritarian personality traits in the 2019 Australian Cooperative Election Study. Racial ideology is durable in Australian Election Study over the period studied (1996-2019) and is consequential for individual vote choice dynamics. I demonstrate the Coalition's appeals to voters' racial ideology successfully attracts Labor partisans to defect with the 2016 Vote Compass survey. Racial ideology has a consequential political geographic distribution for party competition since marginal electoral divisions tend to hold more conservative racial attitudes than the average constituency. The Greens and Coalition have greater control over the media agenda on asylum seeking politics which puts Labor at an electoral disadvantage.