Donkey vote
In electoral systems which use ranked voting, a donkey vote is a cast ballot 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 donkeywise.
Donkey votes are most common where preference voting is combined with compulsory voting, 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 and in the Australian jurisdictions that use the Hare–Clark electoral system.
Donkey votes may occur for several reasons, including voter apathy, 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
for a single seat is used in elections for the Federal House of Representatives, for all mainland State lower houses, and for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. It was also used for the Western Australian Legislative Council until 1986, and the Victorian Legislative Council until 2006; it is still used for the Tasmanian Legislative Council. A variant was used for the South Australian Legislative Council before 1973, with two seats per "province" being filled at each election, but by majority-preferential voting, not by proportional representation.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 ;
- the order of candidates on the ballot paper being decided randomly by the Australian Electoral Commission returning officer after the close of nominations and the commencement of pre-poll voting – candidates were previously listed by alphabetical order.
2005 Werriwa by-election
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:
| 15 | Woodger, Janey |
| 1 | Raue, Ben |
| 14 | Young, James |
| 13 | Lees, Mal |
| 3 | Hayes, Chris |
| 12 | Vogler, Robert |
| 11 | Tan, Greg |
| 10 | Bryant, Joe |
| 16 | Doggett, Charles |
| 9 | Head, Mike |
| 8 | Sykes, Mick |
| 7 | Bargshoon, Sam |
| 2 | McGookin, Pat |
| 6 | Locke, Deborah |
| 5 | Aussie-Stone, Marc |
| 4 | Mannoun, Ned |
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 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 and the donkey vote can impact politics. The Labor leader at the time of the by-election was Anthony Albanese, who had been in charge for a year and losing the seat would have destabilised his leadership and perhaps caused a subsequent Leadership spill. 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, 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 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. Candidates could be listed in groups, but voters could choose any order of candidates regardless of their grouping, because Section 7 of the Constitution 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's group featured four candidates named Amour, Ashley, Armstrong and Arthur—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 for the Australian Senate 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 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 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.