Support for an Indigenous voice to parliament less than 1999 referendum
The Yes vote on an Indigenous voice is below the level of support at the 1999 referendum for inserting a preamble in the Constitution acknowledging Indigenous inhabitation of Australia before European settlement.
The Yes vote on an Indigenous voice to parliament has fallen below the level of support recorded at the 1999 referendum for inserting a preamble in the Constitution to acknowledge Indigenous inhabitation of Australia before European settlement.
Only six out of the 45 referendums held since federation have recorded a lower Yes vote than the voice, according to the latest count figures released by the Australian Electoral Commission.
The Yes vote on the voice question has been falling steadily since counting began on Saturday night and sits at 39.31 per cent.
The 1999 preamble question recorded a Yes vote of 39.34 per cent.
It failed to achieve a majority in every state as well as the Northern Territory.
Only the ACT voted in favour.
The voice, too, has only achieved a majority Yes vote in the ACT.
Only 32 of the 151 federal electorates returned a Yes majority in Saturday’s poll – 25 of which were in inner-metropolitan areas while five were outer metropolitan.
The seats of Newcastle and Cunningham in NSW were the only locations outside the capital cities that voted in favour of a voice.
The Albanese government received a Yes vote in only 19 of the 78 Labor-held seats, while only one of 57 Coalition seats, Bradfield in Sydney’s north, voted Yes.
All Greens seats voted Yes, as did all of those held by teal independents, though the Yes margin in Sophie Scamps’s Sydney northern beaches seat of Mackellar was just 0.1 percentage points on Monday night, while in Kate Cheney’s Perth seat of Curtin, Yes was ahead by 0.7 percentage points.
Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie’s seat of Clark was the other seat that voted Yes.
Dr Scamps was a strong backer of the proposed constitutional change and hosted a voice to parliament community forum in the lead-up to the vote.
Teal independent Ms Chaney has held the seat since 2022, and like Dr Scamps also took an active role in advocating for the referendum.
Ms Chaney uploaded a series of videos titled “The Voice: Countdown to the Vote” that heard from a range of speakers, including Noel Pearson, Ken Wyatt and Thomas Mayo.
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