Talking Point: Red letter day for secular Australians

[rug]

BRIAN MORRIS, Mercury
July 17, 2016 10:00am

WHEN a leading betting agency makes a groundbreaking move to lay odds on the forthcoming Census you know something is about to happen, particularly when those odds centre on the seemingly innocuous question of Religious Affiliation.

A seismic shift will certainly occur on August 9, and it will stem from the question on religion finally being brought into line with other Western countries. The “No Religion” box will be moved to become first option to the question “What is the person’s religion?” – up from last place in each previous Census.

Odds are being given by the betting agency that “No Religion” will now have the highest score and dethrone the Catholics as traditional winners. They topped the pool in the 2011 Census with 25.3 per cent. Anglicans then followed with 17.1 per cent, the Uniting Church 5 per cent, Easter Orthodox 2.6 per cent and Islam at just 2.2 per cent. Consistently buried at the end of the list, “No Religion” still ran second with 22.3 per cent.

But next month this figure is predicted to rise to more that 40 per cent, due to the changes made by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and reflecting the structure adopted by similar countries.

http://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/talking-point-red-letter-day-for-secular-australians/news-story/515c1f15085fdff2f46d443f16ee0569

What's the over/under?

[Jim__]

1. Why do they expect "No Religion" to rise to 40%?

I don't think the article gives a clear answer to that question.

Is it mostly due to its placement at the top of the selection list? Or, is it being placed at the top because there are other indicators that it will be about 40%? If the main reason they expect the number to rise to 40% is that it is the first selection, that would call in to question the validity of the census. If they believe that placement is a significant factor in selection percentage, it might be interesting to have different census forms with the various selections placed randomly in the list and see if placement is a key factor. If it is, it really does call into question the validity of the census.

[rug]

4. My guess it because it's such a broad term.

It's a much more inclusive term than atheist or agnostic. It includes those who don't attend any religious service, are not affiliated with any religion, or, as Tony said below, simply don't care.

[SwissTony]

2. I suspect it's a form of what we call "The Donkey Vote".

In Australia, voting is compulsory. We also have a preferential voting system. You have to rate all the candidates in order (bit of a simplification here, but you'll get my drift).

Suppose the candidates are Smith, Jones, Brown and Green. Their names will appear on the ballot slip in random order e.g.

Brown
Jones
Green
Smith

Now if I favour Green most, followed by Brown, followed by Smith with Jones in last place, my voting slip would look like

Brown 2
Jones 4
Green 1
Smith 3

Then there's a process in which the least popular candidate is eliminated and everyone who is not eliminated moves up a place, if that's possible. For example, if Brown is eliminated, my vote would be essentially recast as

Jones 3
Green 1
Smith 2

and we'd go through another round until we have just two candidates and we'd have a head to head.

The Donkey Vote? Position on the ballot is chosen at random, but candidates very much like to be first in the list. A number of Australians simply fill in the numbers 1 to 4 (or whatever) in order, because they can't really be bothered voting. So, the vote

Brown 1
Jones 2
Green 3
Smith 4

is over-represented. That's the Donkey Vote.

With the Census, you simply tick one box. I suspect the first one is over-represented. Many Australians don't really care much about religion. Being an atheist never caused me any problems in Oz. Probably because nobody was the least bit interested.

[rug]

3. Thanks for weighing in with that perspective.