The Age
Annabel Stafford
November 7, 2007
WHEN Justine Caines and her girlfriends cast about for a name for their political party they knew they needed something catchy.
"We could have become Women Australia or the Australian Women's Party, but people would just go 'bor-ING'," she says. So they came up with What Women Want.
Ms Caines, a NSW Senate candidate, said she hoped the name would have a When Harry Met Sally effect, "You know — I'll have what she's having."
They're on to something. ABC election analyst Antony Green says that for micro-parties a name can be what separates them from the pack.
Names are important. Laws ban party names being too similar to those held by existing parties. The Coalition blames the liberals for forests party for stealing some of its vote in the NSW seat of Richmond in the last election, contributing to its loss of the seat.
Appealing names were also effective, Mr Green said.
Despite the huge number of candidates who compete for election to the NSW Legislative Council, in 1995 a candidate called Alan Corbett gave himself the name A Better Future for Our Children and got up, Mr Green said. And in 1999 — when the ballot paper was so big it was nicknamed "the tablecloth" — The Marijuana Smokers' Rights Party "did particularly well".
Election analyst Malcolm Mackerras agreed that good names worked. He was "inclined to guess that of the 2 per cent of the vote that went to Family First (at the last federal election), 1 per cent was on the name and the other 1 per cent was on the party itself".
Australian National University economist Andrew Leigh said voters who had very little information about parties tended to "take a cue from anything (that is) available".
Votes were influenced, for example, by where a party was positioned on the ballot paper — the so-called donkey vote. Research by Dr Leigh and a colleague has shown that a candidate's attractiveness also has an effect. "So it wouldn't be surprising if people took a cue from how euphonious the name was," he said.
Psychological research also showed people to be attracted to names similar to their own.
But no matter how good the name, it doesn't count for much without a hard-nosed preference deal to back it up.
