Want to combine your love for politics with maths? There’s a job for that!
You may think the election is all done and dusted, our prime minister re-elected and the votes have been counted. However that’s far from true as the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) continues to count up the rest of the votes for the Senate (which can take weeks) and the House of Representatives, with some seats still up for grabs.
If that’s the case, how can the media call the election so fast when the AEC haven’t even counted all the votes yet?! Well behind the scenes there’s a fascinating field that mixes politics, statistics, and a touch of social science called psephology.
While you may be familiar with political journalists, politicians and activists offering up their opinions on the election (and political issues in general), the psephologists look at the hard numbers. They are scientific analysts that find the facts: how many people are eligible to vote in each state, who they voted for and why. Their job isn’t just predicting who will win but understanding why they win and what those results mean for Australia’s future democracy.
Think of it like this: the election night coverage you see on television (or social media), with its graphs, projections, and talk of swings and margins? That’s the work of psephologists brought to life.
Could you be the next Antony Green?
If your first question is “who is that?”, Antony has been a psephologist (and chief elections analyst) for the last 36 years – look at him as the Dr Karl of Australian politics.
In our data-driven world, psephologists are more important than ever to gatekeep Australia’s democracy. So you’re probably wondering, if we only have an election every four years, what does the job look like when an election isn’t happening?
Here in Australia you’ll find we also have state elections and local council elections, and occasionally we have a referendum just like the one we had for the Voice in 2023. So almost every year there is an election to cover.
Not only do they cover elections, but other tasks could be:
- Analysing historical and current election data: Identifying trends and patterns in voting behaviour.
- Conducting opinion polls and surveys: Gauging current public sentiment and predicting future voting intentions.
- Developing statistical models: Creating sophisticated projections of election outcomes.
- Mapping demographic shifts: Understanding how changes in population and demographics might influence voting patterns.
- Communicating findings: Presenting complex data, creating graphs and other visuals to make it easy to understand for clients or the public.
You wouldn’t think so, but every political party, media organisation, and even market research firms like Roy Morgan Research, Social Research Centre and YouGov have psephologists.
If you want to become one, you’ll have to get an undergraduate degree in political science, statistics, data science or both. ANU, Monash and UQ have some great degrees in these areas. Or if you’re not sure this is for you, Griffith University offers a 12-month Diploma of Political Science and International Relations.
So if you love maths, politics and like the idea of getting into other people’s business (i.e. political opinions), this could be the job for you!
