In
electoral system
An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, nonprofit organizations and inf ...
s which use
ranked voting
Ranked voting is any voting system that uses voters' Ordinal utility, rankings of candidates to choose a single winner or multiple winners. More formally, a ranked vote system depends only on voters' total order, order of preference of the cand ...
, a donkey vote is a cast
ballot
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th cent ...
where the voter ranks the candidates based on the order they appear on the ballot itself. The voter that
votes in this manner is referred to as a donkey voter.
Typically, this involves numbering the candidates in the order they appear on the ballot paper: first preference for the first-listed candidate, second preference for the second-listed candidate, and so on. However, donkey votes can also occur in reverse, such that someone numbers the candidates from the bottom up the ballot paper. In systems where a voter is required to place a number against each candidate for the vote to be valid, the voter may give the first preference to the candidate they prefer, then run all the other numbers donkey fashion.
Donkey votes are most common where
preference voting is combined with
compulsory voting
Compulsory voting, also called universal civic duty voting or mandatory voting, is the requirement that registered voters participate in an election. As of January 2023, 21 countries have compulsory voting laws. Law enforcement in those countries ...
, such as in Australia, particularly where all candidates must be ranked on the ballot paper. There are different versions of the phenomenon applicable in the
Parliament of Australia
The Parliament of Australia (officially the Parliament of the Commonwealth and also known as the Federal Parliament) is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Monarchy of Australia, monarch of Australia (repr ...
and in the Australian jurisdictions that use the
Hare–Clark electoral system.
Donkey votes may occur for several reasons, including
voter apathy
In political science, political apathy is a lack of interest or apathy towards politics. This includes voter apathy, information apathy and lack of interest in elections, political events, public meetings, and voting.
Voter apathy is a lack of ...
,
protest voting, simplicity on
how-to-vote cards, the complexity of the voting system, or voter ignorance of the voting system rules. Sometimes, what appears as a donkey vote, may in fact a genuine representation of a voter's preferences.
Manifestation in compulsory preferential voting systems

Australian House of Representatives
Preferential voting
Preferential voting or preference voting (PV) may refer to different election systems or groups of election systems:
* Any electoral system that allows a voter to indicate multiple preferences where preferences marked are weighted or used as cont ...
for a single seat is used in elections for the
Federal House of Representatives (since 1918), for all mainland State
lower house
A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise e ...
s, and for the
Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory (also known as the Parliament of the Northern Territory) is the unicameral legislature of Australia’s Northern Territory. The Legislative Assembly has 25 members, each elected in single-member ...
. It was also used for the
Western Australian Legislative Council
The Western Australian Legislative Council is the upper house of the Parliament of Western Australia, a state of Australia. It is regarded as a house of review for legislation passed by the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, Legislative A ...
until 1986, and the
Victorian Legislative Council
The Victorian Legislative Council is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria, Australia, the lower house being the Victorian Legislative Assembly, Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit at Parliament House, Melbourne, Parliament ...
until 2006; it is still used for the
Tasmanian Legislative Council
The Tasmanian Legislative Council is the upper house of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. It is one of the two Chambers of parliament, chambers of the Parliament, the other being the Tasmanian House of Assembly, House of Assembly. Both ho ...
. A variant was used for the
South Australian Legislative Council
The Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. Its central purpose is to act as a house of review for legislation passed through the lower house, the South Australian House of Assembly, H ...
before 1973, with two seats per "province" (electoral district) being filled at each election, but by
majority-preferential voting, not by
proportional representation
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...
.
The donkey vote has been estimated at between 1 and 2% of the vote, which could be critical in a marginal seat. In a 2010 review, the Victorian Election Commission noted that:
Attempt to reduce the impact of donkey votes
In 1983, reforms were made to Federal electoral legislation to reduce the impact of donkey voting including:
* listing of party names besides each candidate (as for the examples below for the Divisions of Gwydir and Grayndler);
* the order of candidates on the ballot paper being decided randomly by the
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union
A ...
returning officer after the close of nominations and the commencement of
pre-poll voting – candidates were previously listed by alphabetical order leading to parties nominating candidates with names beginning with A.
These reforms as well as an increase in electoral education funding have reduced the impact of donkey voting in Federal elections in recent years. As states have introduced similar reforms, the phenomenon has also been reduced in other jurisdictions. However, donkey voting still needs to be taken into account when assessing the size of the swing or two-party vote in particular electorates.
2005 Werriwa by-election
The
by-election for the Federal electorate of Werriwa, held on 19 March 2005, following the resignation of Federal
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
leader
Mark Latham
Mark William Latham (; born 28 February 1961) is an Australian politician and media commentator who is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Leader of the ...
, provides a good example for understanding the nature of donkey voting.
At this by-election, 16 candidates were nominated. This large number of candidates led to an increased incentive to cast a donkey vote. Every candidate that issued how-to-vote cards used some variation of the donkey vote when instructing his or her voters how to mark preferences, presumably to simplify the task of voting, made onerous by needing to vote for 16 candidates, many with no public profile. Candidates generally allocated their first few preferences and last few preferences to candidates according to their wishes, then numbered the rest of the boxes from top to bottom or bottom to top. For example,
The Greens advocated the following preferences:
In this case, the how-to-vote card advocated a first preference for the Greens, a second preference for the Progressive Labour Party, a third preference for Labor and a last preference for One Nation. Apart from these preferences, the card advocates a reverse donkey vote.
The donkey vote was also reflected in the high vote (4.83%) for Australians Against Further Immigration, who probably would normally gain far fewer votes, but were placed first on the ballot.
2020 Eden-Monaro by-election
The
2020 Eden-Monaro by-election also had a 14 candidate field that was also impacted by the "long form" Donkey vote according to analysis from
Antony Green. Labor candidate Kristy McBain drew position 8 while Liberal candidate Fiona Kotvojs drew the 14th and final position. Unlike most general election seats where only one of the two Coalition partners will stand, in this by-election
The Nationals also stood and drew 5. The right wing agrarian
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party were drawn in the first position and won a larger share of primary votes than they would have further down the ballot. This resulted in the Labor Party gaining an electorally significant amount of 2 party preferred preferences over the Liberal Party. This happened with normal preference flows where small numbers of right wing Nationals and SFF voters preference the centre-left Labor rather than the Liberal Party, and then through Donkey votes both as straight 1 to 14 ballots, and "long form" Donkey votes where minor candidate primary voters completed a down-ballot donkey vote, both types giving their final preference to Labor.
Labor won by 735 votes. Antony Green's analysis of the preference flows believed that had the Liberal and Labor positions been swapped, there would have been 368 two party preferred votes that would have swapped. This would have caused the final count to be 47,468 to the Liberal Party and 47,467 to Labor, a one vote win for the Liberals and a historical victory by taking a seat off an opposition party during a by-election, an event that had not happened since 1920.
During Antony Green's election night summary for the
2025 Australian federal election, Green referenced this election as an example how
luck
Luck is the phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable events, especially improbably positive or negative ones. The Naturalism (philosophy), naturalistic interpretation is that positive and negative events may happen at a ...
and the Donkey vote can impact politics. The Labor leader at the time of the by-election was
Anthony Albanese
Anthony Norman Albanese ( or ; born 2 March 1963) is an Australian politician serving as the 31st and current prime minister of Australia since 2022. He has been the Leaders of the Australian Labor Party#Leader, leader of the Labor Party si ...
, who had been in charge for a year and losing the seat would have destabilised his leadership and perhaps caused a subsequent
Leadership spill
In Australian politics, a leadership spill (or simply a spill) is a declaration that the leadership of a parliamentary party is vacant and open for contest. A spill may involve all or some of the leadership positions (leader and deputy leader in ...
. Holding the seat instead enabled him to avoid any leadership change discussion, maintain the momentum of the Labor party in opposition and he continued into the
2022 Australian federal election
The 2022 Australian federal election was held on Saturday, 21 May 2022, to elect members of the 47th Parliament of Australia. The incumbent Morrison government, Liberal–National Coalition government, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, soug ...
, winning and becoming Prime Minister of Australia, which he followed 3 years later with a thumping landslide victory in the
2025 Australian federal election.
Australian Senate
The
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the Australian House of Representatives, House of Representatives.
The powers, role and composition of the Senate are set out in Chap ...
had a preferential system between 1919 and 1949. From 1934, to elect a State's three senators at a periodic Senate poll, voters had to mark their preference order among the candidates listed on the ballot paper against the names of each of the candidates (with consecutive integers beginning from 1). Candidates could be listed in groups, but voters could choose any order of candidates regardless of their grouping, because Section 7 of the
Constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
provides that senators must be directly chosen by the people. Within each group, the candidates were listed in alphabetical order, and the groups were listed in what was called "ranked alphabetical order", which ensured that a group in which all surnames started with "A" would be at the top of the ballot paper if there were no other group with that feature. The groups were not identified by a party name, but just shown as Group A, Group B, etc. Donkey voters, by definition, marked their earliest preferences against the candidates in Group A, so a group that appeared in that position had an inbuilt electoral advantage.
At the election of senators for New South Wales in 1937,
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
's group featured four candidates named
Amour,
Ashley,
Armstrong and
Arthur
Arthur is a masculine given name of uncertain etymology. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur.
A common spelling variant used in many Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages is Artur. In Spanish and Ital ...
—all of the "Four A's" were duly elected. This prompted the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1940, which replaced that ballot paper layout with one closer to the present layout where the order of candidates' names within each group was determined by those candidates' mutual consent, which in practice means it is determined by the party organization.
The
Chifley Government introduced
proportional representation
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...
for the
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the Australian House of Representatives, House of Representatives.
The powers, role and composition of the Senate are set out in Chap ...
in 1948. Candidates were listed alphabetically in party order and the position of the parties candidates on the ballot paper was determined by lot after the close of nominations.
In large states such as
New South Wales
New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
and
Victoria, there were at times over 100 candidates on the ballot paper, with voters required to list each candidate in order of preference. Consequently, there was a high percentage of informal votes and donkey votes cast in Senate elections.
As a result, electoral reforms were introduced in 1983 allowing voters an alternative of voting 1 above the line for the party of their choice, with preferences being distributed according to a ticket lodged with the
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union
A ...
prior to the commencement of voting. This reform has greatly reduced the incidence of donkey voting and informal voting in Australian Senate elections.
However, this system has led to a great increase of
horse trading by parties in the development of the distribution of preferences as it makes the difference in deciding who fills the final few positions in the Senate representing that State. For example, the election of
Steve Fielding of the
Family First Party in the
Victorian Senate election in 2004 with a party vote of 1.88% resulted from horse-trading associated with this process. States that use proportional representation to elect their upper houses such as New South Wales use a similar system to the Senate.
Victorian Local Government General Elections
Every four years General Elections are typically held for every Local Government Councillor's position. Electors must provide a clear indication of preferences for all candidates, the alternative is an invalid ballot. The size of Candidate fields standing for election in wards has varied from 1 up to 41 Candidates. There is no optional preferencing, typically no grouping of Candidates with an above the line voting option, nor any attempt to minimize donkey vote impacts with a
Robson Rotation.
The minimum information supplied to an elector by the
Victorian Electoral Commission
The Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), formerly the State Electoral Office, is the statutory body responsible for the running of state, municipal and various non-government elections in Victoria, Australia.
Independence
It is an independen ...
(VEC) is a Candidate Information Sheet with every postal vote packet. Each candidate has the option to provide a photograph and a 200 Word submission.
The
Tasmanian Electoral Commission
The Tasmanian Electoral Commission (TEC) in Tasmania, Australia, established in 2005, is an independent office which conducts parliamentary and Local government in Tasmania, local government elections in Tasmania. Elections for the Tasmanian Hous ...
(TEC) investigated donkey vote variations cast in two Tasmanian local government elections. The results were published in the Robson Rotation Discussion Paper and included:
Local government elections
Ballot papers from the 2002 Latrobe and Meander Valley Council elections were examined. The survey of all formal ballot papers found:
* 1.4% of the ballot papers were full linear votes.
* 0.4% of the ballot papers were full linear votes going in the reverse direction (bottom to top).
* 2.4% of the ballot papers were full circular votes.
* 27.5% of the ballot papers showed only the minimum five preferences and 66.4% of ballot papers showed a preference for all 14 candidates. Only 6.1% voted for an in between number of candidates.
* 27.9% of the ballot papers contained partial linear voting. That is, voters casting their first few preferences with apparent care, and then filling in the remaining boxes in a straight sequence up or down the ballot paper.
The simplistic donkey vote definitions used by the
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union
A ...
(AEC) and the
Victorian Electoral Commission
The Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), formerly the State Electoral Office, is the statutory body responsible for the running of state, municipal and various non-government elections in Victoria, Australia.
Independence
It is an independen ...
(VEC) do not include partial linear voting (includes a donkey vote component). The VEC after every election reports to the Victorian Parliament but does not canvas the issues related to bias from donkey vote variations. There has never been any analysis that can be cited for VEC Local Government election results.
In a submission to the "Inquiry into the 2022 federal election" in August 2022, Page, G conducted a statistical analysis of Victorian Local Government Elections from 2008 to 2021. This analysis concluded that in a ballot with 5 or more candidates, 45% more candidates with the number 1 position would be elected than would be expected in a fair election. This effect becomes even more pronounced in ballots with larger fields of candidates. Page, G notes that while these effects are more pronounced in Local Government elections due to their propensity for large fields of candidates, commonly 2 to 18 up to a maximum of 41 candidates, Donkey voting has the potential to influence votes in all Australian elections that do not implement mitigations.
Elections using the single transferable vote
Two Australian jurisdictions use the
single transferable vote
The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vot ...
, also known as the Hare–Clark proportional representation system: the
Tasmanian House of Assembly
The House of Assembly, or Lower House, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. The other is the Tasmanian Legislative Council, Legislative Council or Upper House. It sits in Parliament House, Hobart, Parliament Hou ...
and the
Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory, known in short as the ACT Legislative Assembly, is the unicameral legislature of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It sits in the Legislative Assembly Building, Canberra, Leg ...
(the latter being a
unicameral
Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...
system). Tasmania has used Hare–Clark since 1907, and the Australian Capital Territory since 1995.
In Tasmania, candidates used to be listed in alphabetical order within a party column, leading to a donkey vote effect. For their ballots to be valid, voters only need to number as many candidates as there are vacancies to be filled, although they are free to number all the candidates if they wish.
However, it was observed that often a candidate whose name appeared below the name of a popular candidate (such as a State party leader) would be elected on the leader's second preferences. As popular leaders such as
Robin Gray,
Kate Carnell
Anne Katherine Carnell (née Knowlman; born 30 May 1955) is an Australian businesswoman and former Liberal Party politician, who served as the third Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) from 1995 to 2000.
Early life and ...
or
Jon Stanhope have achieved several quotas of first-preference votes in their own right at the height of their popularity, the impact of this position can lead to candidates being elected on the leaders' "coat-tails". A similar phenomenon has been observed in Ireland and Malta, which also use
single transferable vote
The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vot ...
(with candidates ranked alphabetically).
In 1979,
Neil Robson, a
Liberal member for
Bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Wood
* Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...
in the
Tasmanian parliament, introduced the system known as
Robson Rotation. Under this system, each ballot paper contains a different permutation of candidates so each candidate has a certain percentage of instances at every position in their party's column, therefore equally dispersing the donkey votes and nullifying their impact on the result as to which of a party's candidates is favoured, but allowing the party as a whole to be properly benefited.
Manifestation in other electoral systems
Donkey votes have been observed in democracies other than Australia, even those without compulsory preferential voting, although the presence of these two factors in Australia makes the phenomenon more visible.
In systems where voting is not compulsory, it seems counter-intuitive that many who attend the polls would be apathetic. However, there may be countervailing factors that produce a "donkey vote" even with voluntary turnout. In many
US elections, a voter may well be intensely interested in (e.g.) the
Presidential contest but not in other, less prominent races on the same "long ballot".
Since most non-preferential elections require the voter to mark only one single candidate, or one single party list, it becomes impossible to speculate how many votes for the first candidate or party on the ballot are genuine supporters and how many are donkey votes.
In some elections (e.g.
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and some
US states
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...
), the order of parties on the ballot is in descending order of their support at the previous election (with new parties being placed lowest in random order). Such a system makes high ballot position both a cause and an effect of high electoral support.
United States
Donkey voting shows up in US state elections that use the "long ballot" for numerous offices, or in multi-seat elections where there are several candidates from the same party. In his book ''The Rise of Guardian Democracy: The Supreme Court's Role in Voting Rights, 1845–1969'' (Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1974), Ward E.Y. Elliott notes:
"One long-time Democrat precinct captain in Denver
Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...
noted that, besides having party or lobby support, a candidate had to rank high in the ballot list. Since ballot ranking was alphabetical, most of the eight Denver istrict StateSenators had names beginning with A, B or C." (p 362, citing appellants' brief in ''Lucas v Colorado'').
In 1990, when former
Republican senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or Legislative chamber, chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the Ancient Rome, ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior ...
Lowell Weicker ran for
governor of Connecticut
The governor of Connecticut is the head of government of Connecticut, and the commander-in-chief of the U.S. state, state's Connecticut Military Department, military forces. The Governor (United States), governor has a duty to enforce state laws, ...
outside of the two main American political parties (Republican and
Democratic), he intentionally named his party "
A Connecticut Party
A Connecticut Party was a political party formed by former Republican senator and gubernatorial candidate Lowell Weicker in 1990. Weicker subsequently won the 1990 gubernatorial election and served a single term as governor of Connecticut. T ...
" so as to fall alphabetically first on the ballot. He won the election.
In the 2018
North Carolina Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the State of North Carolina is the state of North Carolina's highest appellate court. Until the creation of the North Carolina Court of Appeals in the 1960s, it was the state's only appellate court. The Supreme Court consists ...
election, a rule change resulted in the order of the names on the ballot differing from previous years. ''
The Charlotte Observer'' claimed that "Studies have shown ballot order favors the candidate listed first, and could make a difference in a close race", even though the State has first-past-the-post voting with voluntary turnout.
United Kingdom
British pro-STV campaigner
Enid Lakeman noted the same effect in
UK local elections, where significant numbers of voters invited to X (say) three candidates for three council seats would simply mark an X against the three highest on the ballot-paper, even if they belonged to different parties.
Ireland
In Ireland, where voting is preferential but not compulsory, the donkey vote has its greatest effect not between parties but within them. With an alphabetical list of candidates, and several candidates from each major party for the three to five seats per district, the proportion of
Dáil Éireann
Dáil Éireann ( ; , ) is the lower house and principal chamber of the Oireachtas, which also includes the president of Ireland and a senate called Seanad Éireann.Article 15.1.2° of the Constitution of Ireland reads: "The Oireachtas shall co ...
deputies with surnames A to M is typically much higher than 50%, whereas it is only about half the population (according to the Irish telephone directory). In ''O'Reilly v Minister for Environment'',
[''O'Reilly v Minister for Environment'' 986IR 143] the
Irish High Court upheld the constitutional validity of alphabetical listing against an equality-rights challenge, noting that despite its faults, A to Z does have the advantage of making it easy to find candidates on the ballot-paper.
References
External links
AustralianPolitics.com*
ttp://prsa.org.au/tasearob.htm Proportional Representation Society of Australia page on Robson RotationWerriwa 2005 by-election Results
{{Politics of Australia, state=autocollapse
Political terminology in Australia