Australia and the UK are both democracies with free and fair elections.
Both have a parliamentary system of government split into three parts: the lower and upper houses plus the monarch (represented by the governor-general in Australia).
Despite these similarities, there are quite a few differences in the way these countries conduct elections.
Different electoral systems
One key difference is that Australia has a preferential voting system while the UK uses a first-past-the-post system.
In Australia's federal elections, voters have to rank their preference for every candidate running to serve as their member in the House of Representatives, as well as a designated number of Senate candidates.
A candidate must gain more than 50 per cent of the vote — which often comes down to counting preferences — to win a seat.
In the UK, it's much simpler.
The candidate who wins the most votes is who wins a constituency (the UK equivalent of an electorate).
The winner doesn’t need to get the majority of votes in their constituency; even one more vote than the next candidate will mean victory.
An unelected upper house
While Australia's — a system in which parties or candidates win seats in proportion to the total votes they receive — the UK's upper house is unelected.
The grand, centuries-old ornate red and gold chamber of the House of Lords in the UK's Palace of Westminster currently has about 800 members, whose places are obtained by arcane rules.
Most are appointed by the prime minister after being nominated for 'life peerage' by political parties or recommended by an appointments committee. Its members also include Church of England bishops and some by right of their aristocratic birth.
While the upper chamber has much less power than the elected House of Commons after reforms in 1911, there have long been calls for an overhaul of the current system.
There have been criticisms that the appointments system leads to cronyism — unfair partiality given to one's friends, particularly in the case of political appointments, without regard for their qualifications.
Vastly different numbers
Australia, though much larger in area than the UK, has far fewer elected representatives in parliament due to its much smaller population.
The population of the UK was 67.6 million in mid-2022, according to the Office of National Statistics. Australia’s population was just under 27 million as of 31 December 2023.
Because of this difference, the House of Representatives, Australia’s lower house of parliament, has 151 elected representatives, while the UK House of Commons has 650 seats.
At the time of the UK's last parliamentary elections in 2019, there were over 47 million voter registrations, whereas that number stood at a little over 17 million at Australia’s last federal elections in 2022.
Voting: Compulsory or not?
Unlike Australia, voting in the UK isn’t compulsory and there's a huge difference between the voter turnout of both countries.
When the UK last went to the polls, turnout was 67 per cent. In Australia, 89.8 per cent of enrolled voters took part in the last federal elections.
Failure to vote in any Australian election incurs a fine ranging from $20 to more than $150, depending upon the state or territory.
For those who can't make it to a polling station on election day, early voting centres allow voters to cast their ballot up to a few weeks in advance.
A man votes during Australia's general election at a polling station on Bondi Beach in Sydney on 21 May 2022. Source: AFP / Steven Saphore / AFP via Getty Images
Voting rights by citizenship
You don’t need to be a UK citizen to vote in an election there, as qualifying Commonwealth citizens can also vote.
According to the UK Electoral Commission, "a person is a qualifying Commonwealth citizen if they do not require permission to enter or remain in the UK, or they do require permission to enter or remain in the UK but have been granted such permission, or are treated as having been granted such permission."
As per data supplied by the UK's Office of National Statistics, the total population born in Commonwealth countries, British Crown dependencies or British overseas territories, who were aged 15 and over in England and Wales at the time of the 2021 Census, was 3.77 million.
Of these, over 100,000 were born in Australia.
Source: SBS News
Proxy voting
If for some reason a UK voter can’t cast their ballot on election day, they can appoint a proxy to do so on their behalf.
A person can act as a proxy for two people — or four, if they're voting on behalf of at least two voters who live overseas.
According to data provided by the UK Electoral Commission, there were 274,684 proxies registered for the 2019 general elections.
There is no such provision in Australia; a person's vote is their responsibility.
A woman votes by proxy for her husband stationed overseas at a polling station in London in the 1945 election. Credit: Central Press/Getty Images
Polling day and times
In the UK, elections have nearly always been held on a Thursday.
Because this is a working day for most people, polling stations are open between 7am and 10pm.
The day of the week for the last parliamentary elections held on 12 Dec 2019, was also a Thursday.
The choice of Thursday is more tradition than rule and there are lots of quirky reasons attributed to it.
As Friday is usually payday in the UK, people are expected to be using their time (and money) doing things they enjoy (with the presumption that voting is probably not one of them).
Sunday, being a day for the devout to attend church, was ruled out due to concerns about sermons influencing people’s political choices.
Meanwhile, holding elections on a Saturday meant the extra cost of paying overtime for election staff.
But Thursday didn't just win by default.
Back in the day, Thursday was also the traditional market day, when people would be out and about in town, so it was considered a convenient day for them to also head to their local polling station.
Thursday is also said to be the chosen day as it lets the incoming prime minister meet the British monarch on Friday and make plans to set up the cabinet on Monday.
An all-day-and-night event
Counting of votes begins immediately after 10pm, with the first results trickling in before midnight. Most results are ready by the next morning, thus making the exercise an all-day-and-night event.
Their is also a traditional race between Newcastle and Sunderland to be the first constituency to declare their election result.
In every general election from 1992 to 2015, Sunderland came in first place.
However, in 2017 and 2019, Newcastle won the race, announcing the first result within 90 minutes of the polls closing.
The first result in the 2015 UK general election was declared before 11pm with Labour candidate Bridget Phillipson winning the Houghton and Sunderland South constituency on 7 May. Credit: WPA Pool / Getty Images
This enables a majority of voters to participate in elections, as they are mandated to do.
Polling is conducted between 8am and 6pm, with counting starting soon after. Results start coming in as the night progresses.
Usually, the newly declared prime minister addresses the nation around midnight.
An extra day off for school kids
Because voting is on a Thursday, many school students get the day off because their school has turned into a polling station for the day.
According to Democracy Club, a data supplier to the UK Electoral Commission, an estimated 3,300 schools were used as polling stations for the nationwide local council elections held on 5 May 2022, also a Thursday.
Political adverts on TV
During election season in Australia, political parties enter our homes on a daily basis via television and radio ads.
That's not the case in the UK, where political parties have been prohibited from advertising on TV and radio for several decades.
As a result, UK political parties have gone digital and the nation is now known for its digitally savvy political campaigners.
Data from the UK's Electoral Commission shows that in the 2017 election, 42.8 per cent of total campaign advertising spending went to ads on digital platforms.
With additional reporting from Reuters.
