Campbell: Voice must change tune as No camp frames information

With the Voice referendum approaching, there’s a decent chance you have seen material from the No camp without realising it’s from the No camp, writes James Campbell.

In the latest deep dive into how the Voice is travelling by pollster JWS Research, there’s a fascinating graphic that captures perfectly the problems its advocates are having.

Since February, support for the Voice has gone south with men and women of all ages in both the city and the country.

The No case is not only gaining ground as people shift from Yes to No, it’s also rising because as more and more undecideds make up their minds, a majority of them are deciding to vote against the proposal.

The Yes case’s problem is that, according to the poll, this decline is happening in a climate in which most people are being exposed to far more pro than anti-Voice information.

Of the people who said they could remember seeing “information, advertising, media stories or social media” about the Voice, 56 per cent said it “mainly” related to supporting the proposal, while 19 per cent of them thought what they had seen was roughly evenly split between the two sides and 12 per cent thought it was neutral. Only 7 per cent of people thought most of the material they had seen was opposing the Voice.

Despite what appears to be a strong Voice referendum campaign, the Yes case is tanking.

On one level this is unsurprising, the federal and all the state governments are pro-Voice as are most of the state opposition leaders, corporate Australia and the people who run professional sport.

Whether you think the media covering this in a neutral way is a matter I’ll leave to you to decide.

Prominent sportspeople such as (from left) Jason Gillespie, Cath Cox, Eddie Betts, Chloe Marton and Andrew Gaze are supporting the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Picture: Image/Martin Philbey

And yet the Yes case is tanking.

This doesn’t mean the No case isn’t spending money.

As Crikey reported last week, between April 18 and June 18, the advocacy group Advance, which is running the No case, “spent $147,750 on Facebook and Instagram advertisements that were shown more than 14.7 million times”.

In the same period Yes23 spent $136,000 on ads that were seen 17.4 million times.

And when it comes to engagement, the No case is killing Yes.

Senator Jacinta Price takes part in the No campaign.

According to Crikey, “over the two-month period, the No campaign’s main social media presence received twice as many likes, comments and shares (103,900 versus 50,000) and more than three times the amount of shares alone (18,700 versus 6400)”.

Given this, how is it then that the overwhelming majority of people surveyed were so convinced the majority of the material they were seeing is pro-Voice?

The answer in part would seem to be that No case is putting a lot of its online spend not into ads but into promoting news stories that it believes will help its cause.

Around half of Advance’s money is going into promoting its Fair Australia social media streams, which are overtly anti-Voice.

The rest is split between two Facebook pages. One, which is soaking up 35 per cent of its budget, is called Referendum News and is targeted at voters outside Sydney and Melbourne.

All this page does is promote any news story from any media outlet that the No case reckons will raise doubts in the voters’ minds.

The posts are designed to look neutral with as little spin as possible.

News stories about Senator Lidia Thorpe are designed to convince the wokerati they should say no. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

As a source inside the No camp said, with undecided and soft Yes voters, it has realised it doesn’t need to beat them about the head with bombastic messages, all it needs to is give them information that “is framed in a way that suits us”.

So far Referendum News has reached 1,291,200 voters delivering 2,745,531 impressions of content.

Advance is also pushing through the No case to inner-city Lefties in Sydney and Melbourne through a page called Not Enough, which as its name implies, posts news stories and quotes from indigenous leaders such as Senator Lidia Thorpe designed to convince the wokerati they should say no.

So all up there’s a decent chance you have seen material from the No camp without realising it’s from the No camp.

And what are the No messages that are cutting through with voters?

According to JWS Research, among the winning arguments are that it is divisive and will give unequal representation to one group of people, and is a waste of money which could be better spent elsewhere.

So every time a pro-Voice voice blasts their opponents as racist, or rips into Australia Day, or otherwise gets cranky at the way things are going, No will be making sure as many people as possible hear about it.

What the Yes case can do about this is unclear. But there’s no doubt it’s in big trouble.