RedBridge poll finds voters don’t think Voice to Parliament is a top-5 priority

An exclusive new poll has found that few Australians rank the Voice as one of the top five priorities for the federal government, nominating cost of living and housing affordability as top issues.

Hardly any Australians rank the Voice as the top priority issue for the federal government, according to a new poll that has also found support for the referendum has fallen to 38 per cent.

The latest RedBridge poll, taken last week, found that despite Yes23 and the Uluru Dialogue stepping up their advertising spend, support for the Voice is still falling.

The poll found that nationally the percentage of people planning to vote for the Voice has dropped by another percentage point since the start of the month.

The last RedBridge poll, taken at the start of September, found support had fallen 5 per cent to 39 per cent in the month since its previous survey.

The only state to buck the trend in the latest poll was NSW, where support for the Voice has increased from 39 per cent to 42 per cent.

Latest poll results show voters want Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to focus on other issues. Picture: Damian Shaw

But this was offset by a decline in support for the Voice in Victoria, where it dropped from 45 per cent to 41 per cent, and in Queensland, where it dropped three points to 32 per cent.

The Voice has been behind in every state and territory, as well as nationally, in RedBridge’s past two polls.

Cartoonist Warren Brown’s view of the latest Voice poll results from RedBridge.

The latest RedBridge research also tested how importantly voters rate the Voice as an issue for the Albanese government.

On that metric it is performing abysmally, a distant last in the issues voters were asked to rank as priorities.

According to RedBridge only 2 per cent of voters rate the Voice as their top or second or third priorities for government (6 per cent in total), while 4 per cent put it down as their fourth and another 4 per cent as their fifth most important issue.

Cost-of-living was easily the most important issue for voters, with 92 per cent of them ranking it in the top five.

This was followed by housing affordability, which was ranked by 73 per cent of people as a priority for government, and the economy and jobs, which was rated by 69 per cent.

The next most important issues for voters were health funding, wages, climate change, the economy transitioning to renewable and national security.

With only roughly 15 per cent of voters putting the Voice as a top-five priority, it was rated as being less than half as important as road and infrastructure funding, which was chosen by 31 per cent of voters.

RedBridge director Tony Barry said “To paraphrase (American political strategist) James Carville: ‘It’s the economy, Albo’.”

He said the poll’s personal issues profile numbers showed that in a cost of living and housing crisis, the government was not aligned on personally relevant issues which is why its messages were failing to land.

“There’s a real risk for Albanese and Labor that the referendum cements the idea that the government has the wrong priorities and that it will then be punished,” Mr Barry said.

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