Great Aussie Debate reveals real battle of Yes campaign

It paints a bleak picture and it’s the last thing that the Yes campaign needed as the referendum nears.

COMMENT

When it comes to the Voice to Parliament, Australia has spoken – and they’re not words the Yes campaign will want to hear.

After weeks of traditional polls showing support for the Indigenous advisory body to Parliament going from bad to worse, news.com.au’s Great Aussie Debate survey of more than 50,000 respondents has revealed the picture is even bleaker still.

The good news is there is a vital kernel of light buried within these figures but there is a lot of bad news to get through first, so let’s have a look at it.

Immediately after the launch of the soul-stirring You’re the Voice ad gave a desperately needed morale boost for Yes supporters – of which I am one – came the crushing Newspoll: Just 38 per cent for Yes, 53 per cent for No and 9 per cent undecided.

In other words, even if the Yes campaign got 100 per cent of undecided voters it would still need to convert a further four per cent of the population currently planning to vote No to instead voting Yes.

I struggle to think of any possible moment in Australia’s democratic history in which such a feat has been even contemplated, let alone achieved, but we live in hope.

Unfortunately what little there was of that was crushed by a Redbridge poll that found 39 per cent of voters supported the Voice.

But hang on, that’s a small albeit still terminal improvement, right? Wrong – Redbridge’s methodology requires undecideds to make a call and so produced an eye-watering 61 per cent vote for No.

In other words, of the 100 per cent of voters that the Yes campaign would need to win to still even be in the game, around 90 per cent chose No.

It is thus perhaps unimaginable that a result worse than this could buffet the Yes cause but news.com.au’s Great Aussie Debate always exceeds expectations.

The Yes campaign has been dealt a series of crushing blows by polling. Picture: William WEST / AFP

Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that despite the massive number of respondents this is not a random or weighted survey and therefore not a statistically representative poll – which is perhaps the only hope the Yes cause can cling to.

Conventional polls are of randomly sampled individuals and ensure that the demographic make-up of respondents – age, sex, location etc – mirrors that of the electorate more generally.

Polls which people choose to take part in skew very heavily to a particular demographic — namely people who choose to take part in polls — and are of course limited to the audience of whoever is conducting the poll.

However given news.com.au’s enormous reach as the biggest news website in the country, the fact it is free to access and the fact it has a younger audience than much traditional news media means the results are still chilling for Voice campaigners for whom young people are the first, last and only hope.

Moreover, given that people who choose to answer surveys are likely to be people who are active and engaged in public debate, and who are likely to be both opinionated and of the opinion that their opinions matter, means this is also a particularly influential cohort.

The Great Aussie Debate asked over 50,000 people how they planned to vote in the Voice referendum. Picture: Andrew Leeson / AFP

And so while these numbers do not reflect what you might call ambient community sentiment on the Voice, they likely reflect the buzz or momentum among those most outspoken or engaged on public issues. They probably reflect, dare I say it, the vibe.

And the vibe is not good.

Fewer than one in four people who chose to respond to the survey – which includes a host of other issues and was not specifically or explicitly about the Voice – said they supported a Voice to Parliament. Just 23 per cent.

The two strongest states – NSW and Victoria – recorded just 25 per cent and even in the dripping-wet woke ACT just 28 per cent supported it.

And tellingly the only age demographic in which support for the Voice was strongest out of the options available was 18-29 with 34 per cent in favour, which even by this former arts student’s reckoning is a fair way below 50 per cent.

The Great Aussie Debate discovered that the Yes vote is languishing. Picture: William West / AFP

However, here we get to the good news – or at least the not horrifically bad news. And that is because in almost all states and age groups the largest cohort wasn’t those who simply opposed the Voice outright but those who said they thought there were better ways to improve outcomes for Indigenous peoples.

This is incredibly important. And it is not only an indictment of what the Yes campaign has so far got wrong but a revelation of how to get it right.

The combined numbers of those who support the Voice and those who think something else or something more should be done to help First Australians is astronomical – around 60 per cent across the board. It is probably no coincidence that it is around the same as the number of people who backed the Voice before all the argy-bargy started.

And so there is a vast amount of support there if the argument is about closing the gap and delivering better outcomes for the most disadvantaged in the here and now rather than lofty and unrelatable arguments from activists about righting historical wrongs or, worse, accusing everyday Australians of racism if they do not support it.

Clearly most Australians did support the Voice until such activists started campaigning in earnest and even now these results show most Australians want better results for our First Nations brothers and sisters.

If the Voice campaign descends into a debate about our past it is doomed to fail. The only hope of it succeeding is if it is shown to be a pathway to a better future.

And I still believe it is.

Originally published as Great Aussie Debate reveals real battle of Yes campaign