Postmaterialism and the vote for the Senate in Australia

There is a disagreement in the political science literature regarding the impact of postmaterialism upon Australian politics. Elim Papadakis, and lan McAllister and Clive Bean argued that postmaterialist values were expressed through support for the minor parties in the 1990 federal election. But David Cow, analysing the same data, found no evidence supporting postmaterialist theory. In this research note, I re-analyse the data and present fresh evidence which suggests that there is a postmaterialist effect associated with voting for the minor parties in the Senate. My analysis also addresses the question of modelling the vote for the Senate to adequately account for the representation of new politics values by the minor parties.