Question-wording effects on the measurement of nonpartisanship: Evidence from Australia

This note shows that adding an explicit 'No party' option to the party identification question in the 1993 Australian Election Study increased the level of measured nonidentification. However, even taking this question-wording effect into account, Australian party identification levels are very high by international standards and have been stable for over 25 years. This contradicts Johnston's (1992) conclusion that differences in levels of party identification among the Anglo-American democracies are largely measurement artefacts. In the Australian case, features of the electoral system such as compulsory and preferential voting are suggested as being important in maintaining such differences. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.