The electoral roll
Your seat is smaller than you think
Australia is divided into 150 federal electorates. Every one of them holds roughly the same number of voters. A vote in one place weighs the same as a vote in another. That is the whole design — what happens in a single seat can decide a government.
The closest result last time
Bradfield was won by 26 votes.
126,860 people are enrolled there. The seat changed hands on a number smaller than a school assembly.
How the roll works
Enrolling is compulsory if you are an Australian citizen aged 18 or over. Once you are on the roll, voting is compulsory too — which is why turnout here is around 90% when most countries manage half that.
You are enrolled at an address, and that address is what puts you in a federal electorate. Move house and it can change.
The boundaries move to keep the seats even. As people move between cities and states, an independent commission redraws the lines so no electorate ends up with far more voters than another. It is called a redistribution, and it happens whether or not anyone is watching.
The size of a seat
Every figure here is from the 150 federal divisions at the last election.
- 18.1M
- On the roll
- 150
- Electorates
- 120,611
- Typical seat
- 74K–143K
- Smallest to largest
The smallest seats are in the Northern Territory, which is guaranteed representation by law however few people live there. Everywhere else sits close to the average, by design.
Why Euthyna counts this way
A national percentage is easy to dismiss. An official can always say the people who answered were not a fair sample, and they will be right often enough for it to work as an argument.
A count in a single seat cannot be dismissed the same way — because it affects the member. That is why every response on this site is counted where the voter lives, and never as a national share.