A social geography of voting behaviour in Sydney and Melbourne

Abstract

There can be little doubt that geographical factors influence all kinds of behaviour, not just because both the behaviours and the factors happen to have geographical distribution, but because the structure of the environment at any time limits certain activities. For instance Dye (1966) found that for the U.S.A. political policy was typically more dependent upon economic geography than upon the political system characteristics. Others (e.g. Butler and Stokes 19^ 9 > Capecchi and Galli 1969> Dogan 1969* Pelling 1967, Prescott 1959) make it fairly clear that geographical factors contribute significantly to the moulding of political predilections. Amongst other things this study attempts to define one form of structural development of pattern by which party preference becomes a non-simple function of socio-economic status in Australian cities. Show more