SSM postal vote: Yes vote faces defeat, academic study claims

The No campaign is poised for a close win in the same-sex marriage postal survey, an academic study has revealed.

A study by a pair of academics points to defeat for the Yes campaign in the same-sex marriage survey. Picture: Getty

An academic study of Twitter opinions is pointing to a narrow defeat for the ‘yes’ vote in the same-sex marriage survey.

The study is at odds with myriad opinion polls, including the latest Newspoll on the same-sex marriage survey, showing the ‘yes’ vote could be as high as 60 per cent.

While 72 per cent of tweets favoured same-sex marriage, less than 15 per cent were sent by people over the age of 55, a Griffith University study shows.

Academics David Tuffley and Bela Stantic used advanced data analytics which they say have proven uncannily accurate at predicting the outcomes of hard-to-call polls, including the 2016 US presidential election.

They looked at the publicly available data from 458,565 tweets through October 2017.

On the face of it, when all the captured Tweets were considered, there appeared to be overwhelming support for ‘yes’, they said.

Taking the sentiment of the unique users into account, the adjusted figure in support came down to from 72 per to 57 per cent.

Adjusting the low proportion of tweets from over-55s and matching it against the 36 per cent of the voter pool they represent, support for ‘yes’ comes down to 49 per cent.

“So it is likely to be a close-run result, much closer than the earlier polls suggested, and leaning in the direction of ‘no,’ Professor Stantic and Mr Tuffley said.

Academic David Tuffley.

“One of the problems with predicting poll outcomes is that people are often reluctant to say out loud what they really think about issues,” the pair argue.

“What people say online can often be more accurate than what they say to each other in this age of political correctness.”

Votes in the $122 million same-sex marriage poll have flooded in, with responses surging past 12.3 million as of last Friday.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed on Tuesday that 77 per cent of all eligible voters had had their say ahead of the poll close on Tuesday, November 7 at 6pm.

About 16 million forms were sent out in September.

Survey results will be published on November 15.

AAP