"donkey vote" meaning in English

See donkey vote in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: EN-AU ck1 donkey vote.ogg Forms: donkey votes [plural], donkey-vote [alternative]
Etymology: From donkey (“fool”) + vote, from donkeys often being depicted as clumsy and lacking intelligence (see ass). First attested in 1962. Etymology templates: {{com|en|donkey|vote|t1=fool}} donkey (“fool”) + vote, {{etydate|1962}} First attested in 1962 Head templates: {{en-noun}} donkey vote (plural donkey votes)
  1. (chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent). Tags: Australia Hypernyms: vote
    Sense id: en-donkey_vote-en-noun-W4BhLOuO Categories (other): Australian English, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 50 50 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 50 50 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 50 50
  2. (chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent).
    A vote so cast.
    Tags: Australia Hypernyms: vote, vote Related terms: donkey voter
    Sense id: en-donkey_vote-en-noun-mSbCzIfa Categories (other): Australian English, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 50 50 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 50 50 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 50 50

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "From donkey (“fool”) + vote, from donkeys often being depicted as clumsy and lacking intelligence (see ass). First attested in 1962.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "donkey votes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "donkey-vote",
      "tags": [
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          "ref": "1993, John Craig, Australian Politics: A Source Book, page 178:",
          "text": "Examination of the 1984 and 1987 federal elections showed the donkey vote to be worth about 0.65% of the formal vote (Peetz 1989:469).",
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          "ref": "2000, Shaun Bowler, Elections in Australia, Ireland, and Malta Under the Single Transferable Vote, page 56:",
          "text": "This needs to be tempered somewhat: Voting systems that require electors to express preferences they may not in fact possess are susceptible to random effects such as the so-called donkey-vote phenomenon observed for federal elections in Australia, in which some electors simply number sequentially from 1 onward down the ballot paper.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent)."
      ],
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      "id": "en-donkey_vote-en-noun-W4BhLOuO",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent)."
      ],
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          "ref": "1979, Howard Rae Penniman, editor, The Australian National Elections of 1977, page 325:",
          "text": "The share of preferences going from the Progress Party to the Democrats was swollen, if not almost wholly accounted for, by donkey votes.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent).",
        "A vote so cast."
      ],
      "hypernyms": [
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          "word": "vote"
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      "id": "en-donkey_vote-en-noun-mSbCzIfa",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent).",
        "A vote so cast."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "_dis1": "39 61",
          "word": "donkey voter"
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      "tags": [
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    },
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      "word": "donkey voter"
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        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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              181,
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          "text": "This needs to be tempered somewhat: Voting systems that require electors to express preferences they may not in fact possess are susceptible to random effects such as the so-called donkey-vote phenomenon observed for federal elections in Australia, in which some electors simply number sequentially from 1 onward down the ballot paper.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent)."
      ],
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        "(chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent)."
      ],
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          "text": "The share of preferences going from the Progress Party to the Democrats was swollen, if not almost wholly accounted for, by donkey votes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent).",
        "A vote so cast."
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        "(chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent).",
        "A vote so cast."
      ],
      "tags": [
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/EN-AU_ck1_donkey_vote.ogg"
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  "word": "donkey vote"
}

Download raw JSONL data for donkey vote meaning in English (4.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.