The objective of this research is to develop a prototype Web geographical information system (GIS) for mapping voting patterns at the 2004 Australia federal election. Our application, which integrates GIS functionality, client/server technology and the Internet, can generate useful documents such as maps to examine and present patterns of voting across polling booths with the capacity to match socioeconomic data from the census to polling booth catchments. A classification functionality that consists of Equal Interval, Quantile, Natural Breaks and Location Quotient to generate different choropleth displays has been added to the Web GIS application for identifying inherent patterns and level of voter support for a political party received through the primary votes or two party preferred casts for candidates standing for a party. The polling booths outcomes which may be expected on the basis of socioeconomic data for booth catchments are modelled using discriminant analysis, and these expected outcomes can be visualised using the Web GIS application. We expect that politicians and political party leaders could utilise the application and associated maps to facilitate policies that are oriented towards specific demographic and socio-economic groups or to voters in particular regions. This Web GIS application is useful to show the pattern and benchmark of voting outcomes of political parties such as Coalition, Labor, Democrats, Greens and Family First.
To access the Web GIS you must have the Java plug-in (a Java Runtime Environment - JRE) installed on your computer and your browser must be configured to enable Java applets.
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