Indigenous Voice to Parliament: No campaign now leading in every state, polls show
As the race to the Voice referendum reaches brutal extremes, a grim sign has emerged for Yes campaigners ahead of October 14.
The outlook for supporters of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament looks increasingly bleak ahead of the October referendum, with the latest polls estimating the No campaign is now leading in every state.
Support for the Voice had already been waning in a worrying sign for Yes campaigners, with support for the referendum dropping 21 percentage points nationally in the past year, according to Guardian Australia’s poll tracker.
That is largely similar to declines across most states – especially South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. Victoria had the smallest decline (18 points), while support in Western Australia dropped the most, by a massive 25 points.
Adding to the woes of the Yes campaigners, The Guardian’s models also show that people are increasingly sure of how they will vote – with the estimated proportion of undecided halving this year.
The Guardian collected and compared results from 48 polls and 10 different pollsters to create estimates for each state. The ACT, Northern Territory, and Tasmania have not been counted toward these estimates.
Although there is some variation between polls – including, for instance, their sample size, questions asked, weighting and difference in reporting – which can affect estimates, the modelling does not bode well for the Yes campaign as Australia nears polling day.
In what has become a brutal race to the finish line by both Yes and No campaigners, the Prime Minister has been compelled to step in and call for both sides to “tell the truth” ahead of the October 14 vote.
Anthony Albanese made a call for mature debate on Thursday after a particularly venomous week on the campaign trail, including a string of reports that Yes and No campaigners were using deceptive tactics to win support.
Among the reports included allegations that anti-Voice campaigners were calling voters anonymously to spread false claims about Indigenous people.
In Question Time earlier this week, Opposition leader Peter Dutton was accused by Labor frontbenchers of leading a “misinformation and disinformation campaign” that pedalled “fear over fact”.
His comments came moments after Indigenous Affairs minister Linda Burney called for mutual “respect” in the debate, “guided by love and by faith”.
Meanwhile, a training document for the Yes campaign emerged online that encouraged volunteers to paint anti-Voice advocates as “vilifying” Aboriginal people.
Addressing the war of words on Thursday, Mr Albanese declared: “I’m not interested in misinformation. I’m interested in facts.”
But just hours after the Prime Minister’s call for maturity on both sides of the campaign, the Opposition spokeswoman for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Nampijinpa Price called out online trolls for leaking her phone number online.
In her first address to the National Press Club, Senator Price said she had become a target for abuse in her campaign against the Voice to Parliament that culminated in a torrent of “revolting” messages being sent to her phone.
Since her number was leaked on Wednesday, she said she has been “absolutely bombarded with the most revolting messages, voicemail messages that you could think of”.
“What I can say is that from the moment this referendum was launched by our Prime Minister, our nation has been divided,” Ms Price said.
“We have seen ugliness on display, from right across the board. I know myself and Warren Mundine have been the subject of horrible racial vilification.”
She said she held Mr Albanese responsible “for the division that we’re now confronted with”.
“He chose to take this path to divide our nation to not undergo the appropriate processes to involve the Australian people and constitutional conventions and to bring everybody along for the ride.
“I condemn all kinds of horrible behaviour that has come out as a result of this.”
Australians will flock to the polls on October 14, where they will vote to change the constitution to: “Recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.
A double majority is required to win the referendum – that is: a majority of ‘yes’ votes nationally, and a majority of ‘yes’ votes in four of the six states.
Every Australian aged 18 and over, and who has enrolled to vote, must take part in the referendum.
Accent Research principal Shaun Ratcliff – who ran one of the largest polls for the Voice for the group behind the Uluru Statement from the Heart – told the Guardian support for the referendum has waned as more people cement whether they will vote Yes or No.
The proportion of people unsure on the Voice appeared to decline as debate heated up, the Voice became the centre of the news cycle, and as campaign ads rolled out.
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“Salience has definitely increased and so some of the increase in the No vote is people who had been parking themselves in ‘don’t know’ because they really didn’t know much about it and so weren’t confident enough to express an opinion,” Dr Ratcliff said.
“Some of those ‘don’t knows’ have shifted to Yes, but I suspect more have shifted to No.”
More concerning, still, Dr Ratcliff said the “hard No has gone from massively outnumbered by hard Yes to more or less the reverse”.
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