They’re called ‘soft voters’. The major parties can’t figure out how to reach them

These trends have coincided in a rise of independent candidates being elected to parliament at the expense of support for major paries.

Meanwhile, voter disengagement has grown. The 2022 election recorded the smallest proportion of voter turnout since the 1920s, when compulsory voting was introduced.

The Australian Election Study found that in 2022, nearly one-fifth fewer people “care a good deal about the election” compared to two decades ago, in 1993.

In the same period, the number of people who did not watch the election debate halved, with 30 per cent avoiding the contest in 1993 compared to 66 per cent in 2022.

Mara Board, a humanitarian and development student who lives in St Marys, said she pays more attention to global issues than Australian political news.

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“I don’t really see the government doing anything,” said Board. “People my age are really into politics and what’s going on, but not over here in Australia. [Politicians are] just not really around doing much for people our age, they don’t really talk to us.”

With the chance to form government on the line in the final week of the election, political parties are about to kick off a furious bout of campaigning to capture the support of the large cohort of undecided voters. But Sheppard does not expect these outcomes to count for much.

“[Political parties] can’t fatten the pig on market day, and you can’t convince people weeks out from the election that you will be better than you have been for the last three years,” she said.

Chambers said most of the little local news media he consumes comes from the internet, despite his recognition of the importance of politics.

“I’m not too interested but I know it’s important,” he said.

Despite his indifference Chambers plans to vote Labor, “just because I believe [Coalition Leader Peter] Dutton is trying to get rid of the union,” he says.

“That obviously affects me. And Labor always helps out the trades – supposedly – at least.”

Jeannie Boros, 66, said she is not interested in politics and most of her knowledge of it comes from television news programs.

When it comes to voting in this election, she will be guided by a simple principle: stick with what she knows.

“I listen to both parties, but I just go back to my old party. It’s just ingrained [in me],” she says.

The big block on undecideds was a quirk of Australia’s compulsory voting system, which creates both benefits and risks for the democratic process.

“In another country, these soft voters wouldn’t vote, we would just call them non-voters, and that is absolutely unique to Australia,” Sheppard said.

Despite the rise in popularity of independent politicians, compulsory voting props up the major parties, according to Sheppard.

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“Being loyal doesn’t necessarily mean you’re engaged.

“In Australia, we have about the highest rates of partisanship in the world. It declined everywhere in the world before it started to decline here, and it was held up until now by compulsory voting.”

Sheppard said there were two distinct groups among the large cohort of undecided voters – those who are “reading policy announcements and thinking hard” and the “ones who don’t”.

Ollie Sardelich, 27, is one of the highly engaged voters.

“Choosing to put your head in the sand kind of just makes things worse,” she said.

However, the disengaged voters “vastly outnumber” those who are actively weighing up their choices, and they are likely to get their ballot casting duty over with as early as possible.

“That much larger group will not engage much more heavily between now and when they vote and they’re likely to vote pretty early because they want to be done with it,” Sheppard said.