Weekly Dose of Data Analyst #2— Which Australian Major Party receive more political donation ?
I am curious about which Australian political party receive more donation overall and in each individual year. In addition, whether the amount of political donation will affect the outcome of the election results.
Summary
The Coalition has been leading the Labor party in the political donation chart since FY2012/2013. The gap between the Coalition and the Labor party has not been reduced in recent years. The amount of political donation a party received in an election year is not a good indicator of which party will become the ruling party in that election. However, the money a party spent during the election year is a fairly good indicator of which party will become the ruling party.
Details
By Australian laws, political party need to disclosure their financial information to the public to increase their overall transparency (See disclosure details in the link below https://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/financial_disclosure/). So it is not difficult to access all these information (However, the accessible data only includes financial information from FY98/99 and onwards).
In the following charts, I have combined donation for Australian Liberal Party and the Nationals together as they are the Coalition in the parliament. The results has been shown in the chart below. Details of the political donation in each financial year can be found in my tableau workbook.
Just judging from political donation amount, before FY2012/2013, Australian Labor Party and the Coalition are close. Out of 14 financial years, the Coalition is leading the chart in 7 of them compare to Labor’s 7. The total political donation to both parties are between FY1998/1999 to FY2011/2012 are close as well. Labor party has received about 780 million in total, while Liberal party has received similar amount(See chart below).
However, the Labor has not taken the lead ever since and the gap between their donation has not been reduced neither. The biggest donation gap happened in FY2013/2014 which is around 60 Million (see the chart below). This is almost equivalent to a whole year’s donation ( in some cases two years ) to a major political party in Australia.
So it is not surprising that the Coalition is leading the overall political donation in the last 7 years (See its chart below).
So enough for the trending of the data, does political donation amount help the party to become a ruling party in Australian parliament? The answer is, it is really not an accurate indicator. Since the recording of the data (FY1998/1999), out of eight elections, only 5 times the party received more political donation has become the ruling party of the parliament. These elections years are 2004,2007,2013,2016,2019.
In comparison, if you look at the money spent by the major political party the accuracy becomes better. Out of eight elections, 6 times the party spent more money has become the ruling party of the parliament.
If you are interested in the details of these charts mentioned above, please see it on my Tableau workbook.
In next post, I will be analysing donation to other parties other than the two major party in Australia.
Data Source:
