The election was held in conjunction with two referendum questions, neither of which was carried.
Background and issues
The election had a long campaign and a high rate of informal voting for the House of Representatives, but decreased rate in the Senate (due to the introduction of the Group voting ticket). Although a House election was not due until 1986, Hawke opted to call an election 18 months early in part to bring the elections for the House and Senate back into line following the double dissolutionelection of 1983.
The legislated increase in the size of the House by 24 seats and the Senate by 12 seats came into effect at the 1984 election. Prior to 1984 the electoral commission did not undertake a full distribution of preferences for statistical purposes. The stored ballot papers for the previous election were put through this process prior to their destruction – therefore the figures from 1983 onwards show the actual result based on full distribution of preferences.
The results of the election surprised most analysts;[citation needed] the expectation had been that Bob Hawke – who had been polling a record ACNielsen approval rating of 75 percent[2] on the eve of the election – would win by a significantly larger margin. Labor instead suffered a 2-point swing against it and had its majority cut from 25 to 16. Hawke blamed the result on the changes to Senate vote cards, which he believed confused people regarding their House of Representatives votes and contributed to the relatively high informal vote, the majority of which apparently was Labor votes.[3] However, analysis by the Australian Electoral Commission found that informal voting only slightly reduced Labor's primary vote and did not change the result in any division.[4]
Andrew Peacock did well from a good performance in the one leaders' debate, held on 26 November 1984,[5] which was the first televised leaders' debate in Australia.[6] It was because of Peacock's performance at the leaders' debate that Hawke refused to debate John Howard for the 1987 election. Ironically when Hawke agreed to do the leaders' debate for the 1990 election it was again with Peacock.
↑ Hawke, RJL (1996). The Hawke Memoirs. Port Melbourne: Mandarin. pp.275–276. "Attracted to the simplicity of the Senate ballot, a number of voters thought they could mark their Lower House ballot in exactly the same way. Unfortunately for both them and us the informal vote for the House of Representatives swelled from 2 per cent to nearly 7 per cent. On the best surmise the bulk of the informals were Labor votes."
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5.30%
0.45 pp)
