How every Australian electorate was predicted to vote

Forecasting by a UK firm came impressively close to predicting the outcome of yesterday’s referendum. See how their predictions matched up to the results in your electorate.

3 min read

October 15, 2023 - 1:34PM

Sky News breaks down the paths and processes of the Voice to Parliament referendum

Analysis by a UK firm has come impressively close to accurately predicting the outcome of yesterday’s referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

According to the analysis by focaldata, just 22 electorates out of 151 across Australia were predicted to vote Yes to the referendum on Saturday.

As counting continues, the actual number of electorates to vote Yes stands at 32.

For the voice referendum to pass, it needed a majority across Australia, and four of the six states to also have a majority of Yes votes.

As it happened, the ACT was the only jurisdiction in Australia to embrace the proposal

The analysis predicted that the “no” vote could pick up as much as 61 per cent of the vote versus 39 per cent “yes”, greater than the most recent Newspoll, which put the split at 66 to 34 per cent.

That prediction proved to be eerily precise, with the AEC showing the national majority currently at 60.25 per cent “No” and 39.75 per cent “Yes”.

Focaldata also made predictions on the state and territory electorates where the Yes and No votes were most likely to be strongest and weakest.

Those predictions also proved to be generally accurate, although in many cases the number of people predicted to vote either Yes or No was underestimated or overestimated by a matter of a few percentage points.

In NSW, only a handful of inner city and suburban seats were expected to vote “yes”, while in Queensland, which was expected to come in heavily against the referendum, only the inner-city seats were expected to vote “yes”.

Opposition in regional Queensland was among the strongest anywhere in the country.

In South Australia, there was support for Yes in Adelaide, but it fell quickly outside the inner suburban seats.

A similar story was told in Victoria, where Melburnians in the seat of Melbourne were expected to overwhelming endorse the Voice by 64 per cent but support dropped off rapidly outside the city.

See focaldata’s predictions below, then follow the links to see how people in your state or territory actually voted.