The Australian Voting Distribution: Similar to the United States?

The Oz Politics Blog has a fascinating post highlighting data gathered by Dr Roger Stimson about the Australian Political Landscape. The bit that interested me was the map showing the voting distribution of Australia.

This is the overall picture: Overall Australian Voting Distribution Map

This is a close-up of Sydney: Sydney Voting Distribution Map

What struck me is the similarity between the Australian distribution and the voting distribution of the United States. Both countries have large regions of right-wing voters, with the exceptions of the more densely populated areas that vote left-wing.

The linked post contains these points of analysis by Stimson:

The government Coalition parties have captured most of the settled rural and regional areas, and it is not just the Nationals but also the Liberals that have widespread ‘heartlands’ of political dominance. Within the big cities the, dominance of the Liberal Party is not only across wedges of the higher socio-economic areas of the mostly middle suburbs, but it has also extend across the large belts of the outer suburbs and even more widely across the outer fringe areas to capture many areas in what used to be Labor’s ‘heartland’ as transform them into Liberal ‘heartlands.’
The Labor ‘heartlands’ are predominantly found in the central city and inner suburbs of the big cities, and in suburbia the now more restricted belts of Labor dominance are clearly associated with populations characterised by immigration and multiculturalism as well as the traditional areas of disadvantage.

Interesting stuff.

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