Underdeveloped nationalism or populist protest? Why the Republic Referendum was defeated

Abstract

In this paper I draw on survey data from the Australian Constitutional Referendum Study 1999 (ACRS99) to examine the factors underlying the defeat of the Republic proposal. Initially I investigate the factors that differentiated those direct electionists who supported the referendum from those who did not; among the factors considered are attitudinal, partisan and socio-demographic ones. I also investigate various conceptions about national identity held by Australians and examine both whether the debate leading up to the referendum appears to have had much impact on these conceptions, and also how they were associated with voting at the referendum. Finally, I use multivariate logistic regression to jointly analyse all of the explanations and find that all are supported to some extent.