| Abstract: | Election to the Australian Senate under proportional voting and statewide quotas gives to minor parties of the political centre a chance to win parliamentary representation otherwise denied them in the single member constituency‐based House of Representatives. Focusing on the Australian Democrats, vote splitting in the context of ? consistently higher levels of support for the Democrats in the upper house provides some evidence of differences among sources of electoral support between House and Senate, but within a context of general similarity of voter behaviour. Findings support a view that, as a party of ‘concerns’ rather than ideology, with a highly unstable support base, the future of the Democrats as other than a focus for protest must remain in doubt. |
