Australian and New Zealand Leaders, Elections and Democracy Data Asset (ANZLead)

The Challenge

Combining Australia and New Zealand’s political and social science data sources gives political scientists and policymakers a competitive advantage through data. 

The ARDC and our partners recognise the societal impact that can be achieved when our research community can more easily find, access and integrate data sources in order to study complex problems in political science.

However, our two nation’s political and social science data sources have historically been developed and stored independently across organisations, using bespoke vocabularies, identifier systems and data standards, making them difficult to integrate.

The Response

The Australian and New Zealand Leaders, Elections and Democracy Data Asset (ANZLead) project has brought together, for the first time, a comprehensive collection of national datasets in political science covering 4 key populations required for understanding the dynamics of political activity in Australia:

1. the voting public – Australian and New Zealand voters and citizens
2. political elites – candidates, parliamentary members and bureaucrats
3. elections – federal and state election results and enrolments
4. electorates – geographic and administrative characteristics of federal and state electorates. 

With university and government partners, we’ve undertaken harmonisation and standardisation work to create a data asset that:

• is national in scope
• is extensive in time scale – ranging from Federation to the present day
• covers a significant breadth of the political science discipline.

Who Will Benefit

The ANZLEAD data asset is accessible to researchers around the world through a shared data storage and access environment. It is also open to the Australian and international population for education and civic participation purposes. 

The availability of a common reference model for key populations – using shared, published vocabularies for core political and demographic information – will benefit the political science policy and research community.

Our Partners

• Australian National University
• University of Sydney
• University of Adelaide
• University of Melbourne
• University of Western Australia
• Griffith University
• University of Auckland
• Victoria University of Wellington
• Australian Electoral Commission