Same-sex marriage survey: 61.6 yes, 38.4 no

And the winner is …

So there you have it. Below is a tool for exploring the results at divisional level according to a range of electoral and demographic criteria. Take your pick from the drop down menu, and you will get divisional “yes” votes recorded on the vertical axis, and their results for the relevant indicator on the vertical axis. Most of these are self-explanatory, with the exception of “One Nation support index”. This equals the division’s 2016 Senate vote for One Nation divided by the party’s overall Senate vote in that state, multiplied by 100. So an electorate will score 100 if its One Nation vote is exactly equal to the state average; it will score 200 if it’s double; 50 if it’s half; and so forth. This is to prevent the party’s across-the-board high results in Queensland from spoiling the effect. “Finished school” is measured as a percent of the 15-plus population.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,326 comments on “Same-sex marriage survey: 61.6 yes, 38.4 no”

Comments Page 6 of 27
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  1. Well, how’s this for a psephological fact?

    Guess which seat is the bellweather seat now?
    It’s Robertson, my seat.

    Now, guess what position it took in the tally of all 150 seats?
    75!

  2. The horizontal axis represents whatever you have selected from the drop-down box (coalition 2pp, Greens primary vote, etc.), increasing to the right.

  3. AJM
    Yes to be fair the way the whole of Qld does get maligned with the Hanson brush is not fair. I have experienced some fairly nasty right wing types in isolated locations in Qld (Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley), but not in the rest of Qld. I do not perceive social attitudes in Brisbane or the big coastal centers as being any different from the southern capital cities.

    That being said, Hanson is atrocious. Then again, here in SA, we have Cori Bernardi. Shall we swap loons?

  6. ElysseMorgan: The Bakers Assoc. of Australia tells me they don’t want to be involved in the debate. “What baker in their right mind would not bake someone a cake?” #auspol #MarriageEquality

    Thats true.

    But I would not put it past abbott, andrews, abetz, et al to argue for a compensation package for those bakers who chose not to bake a cake because of their opposition to ME and thus miss out on the revenue.

  9. ratsak: “It’s only circumstantial evidence obviously, but if you have something to counter I’d be genuinely interested.”

    Due to my longstanding connections to India, I meet and socialise with a lot of Indian migrants to Australia, and have found all but a handful to have political views well to the right of mine (and, depending on where you define the centre, I’m either at it or a little to the right of it).

    In my experience Hindus, like most east Asians, have little or no enthusiasm for the welfare state, trade unions, homosexual rights and a range of other things dear to most ALP supporters. Muslims from India or Pakistan are a little different, as – despite being socially conservative – they tend to feel more like a downtrodden minority group and therefore more inclined towards the political left.

    But you’re correct, I have no hard data to back up these impressions. I wonder if there is some available somewhere?

  14. Unions should use this religous exemption crap and revert to the days when they were religous organisations, branches were chapels, members were brothers, delegates for the branch fathers of the chapel.

    non-employment and disregarding enterprising agreements is religous discrimination against brothers and chapels.

  16. Macquarie isn’t really Sydney the same way Robertson and Cunningham aren’t Sydney.

    The demographics of Lindsay and Macarthur will make them increasingly more natural ALP. Hume will start moving towards Labor. Banks is interesting as it’s sort of a bit Shirish down along the river (and those Hobbits are weirdos) and bit Bankstown/Punchbowl in the North.

    I’m not sure you can say it’s trending against the ALP though. Lots of densification and a more diverse population moving in which says ALP territory to me. Preselect a good candidate and Labor can win and hold Banks. The river means it’s not likely to move further south which will discount the chances of it becoming Liberal territory.

  17. caf (Block)
    Wednesday, November 15th, 2017 – 1:50 pm
    Comment #259
    Can I be the first to call for a Baking Royal Commission?

    You know it won’t get up because the Conservatives will vote against it? 😉

  22. Jack Aranda @ #242 Wednesday, November 15th, 2017 – 1:30 pm

    Bushfire, Itza, did you read the whole of Murphy’s article? She may say it’s an opportunity for the Coalists, but she does seem to have her doubts as to whether they will rise to it. Eg,
    “If all that sounds fragile, and uncertain, it is. Proceeding on those parameters requires reason and functionality, and in Canberra, we’ve almost forgotten what that looks like.”
    I quite agree with her – it’s an opportunity for all of them to show that they can pull together and remember what the party name means. I also think they’ll blow it!

    J A, I apologise and confess no i didn’t, I cravenly jumped on with B B to put the boot in, using too busy (roof and gutters getting cleared, fertilser spread, there’s a few days rain coming, in and out, addicted to trying to stay abreast) as a reason, not an excuse. Thanks for directing me.

  23. Labor should be gunning for Cash in QT given the speech Doug Cameron just gave. He outlined Cash’s appalling behaviour, said she should resign or be sacked and then went on to say that O’Sullivan and Patterson had threatened to refer him to the Privileges Committee, a prospect he said he’d relish. Cameron went on to say that he would not be bullied by the likes of O’Sullivan and CERTAINLY not by Patterson,
    Doogie’s all warmed up!

  26. VoiceMakarrata: We said YES! to SSM. ️‍ plz join ur voice with First Nations ppl now 2 say that Turnbull is wrong on a First Nations Voice 2 Parliament!

  27. Just dropping in to express my congratulations to the yessirs. You are all justifiably happy today. That is a good thing and I’m not going to rain on the parade with any churlishness today.

    Cheers.

  28. Darn: “Do we have any knowledge of what the attitude of traditional aboriginal communities was towards homosexual/lesbian orientations prior to the coming of the white man with his alien religious beliefs?”

    I have read widely through the anthropological literature and – perhaps it’s not politically correct to bring this up nowadays – but there is evidence in some communities of what we might call institutionalised homosexuality within the male warrior group, particularly between elders and younger initiates: a type of activity also identified by anthropologists in some tribal societies in Africa, the Pacific and the Americas.

    However, marriage-type arrangements (which varied from community to community) would appear to have been exclusively heterosexual. I haven’t come across any accounts of open same sex relationships in traditional aboriginal societies. However, many of these societies featured a pretty free and easy approach to sexual activity, so it might well be that homosexual sex was rampant and that the anthropologists (who mostly worked at a time when homosexual activity was not socially acceptable in white society) missed it or didn’t want to report it.

  29. Socrates, AJM – Ruddy got into a lot of trouble when he said “As soon as you cross the Pine River you can hear the banjos playing”. But he’s about right – there’s a belt of Hansonites running around from the Border Ranges through the Lockyer Valley to Gympie. Settled by small-holding farmers who used to pull their kids out of school as soon as they legally could (or earlier) so they could help out on the farm. No time for edumacation and no time for people who were different in any way. Then further away from Bris you get the types who used to vote for the agrarian-socialism-but-no-rights-for-the-workers policies of the Country Party. Since the CP changed it name and lost its influence over the Illiberals Katter represents them. So yeah, Queenslanders are still a bit different – sorta like the rest of Oz but with the urban-rural differences amplified. The fact that the No-voting areas are in the bush rather than the burbs as in Sydney and Melbrrrne shows that.

  31. Maybe you’re just associating with the more entrepreneurial end of the Hindu spectrum MB? They may be the core Liberal vote in safe Western Sydney seats, or maybe they’re just not a uniform block with a large ALP contingent and smaller Lib contingent just like the Muslim community?

    Either way the Libs aren’t winning Western Sydney seats for the foreseeable future. Labor has it’s weaknesses in plenty of other areas, but it will be End Times when seats like McMahon fall.

  35. C@tmomma: “meher baba,
    Why do you leave out the Sikhs?
    Do you not have any contact with them?”

    There seem to be a lot of Sikhs in other parts of Australia (particularly on the NSW mid-north coast, but also in Sydney and Melbourne) but, they are rare in Tasmania. In India Sikhs are generally much less socially and politically conservative than Hindus: perhaps it’s the same here, but I don’t know. (The one whom Sikh I know in Tasmania is a young woman who has broken away from her community to some extent and lives a western lifestyle, but I’m not sure she’s a representative sample).

  37. It’s about time for Labor and anyone else who is sick of political game playing on this issue to simply say it’s the Smith bill or nothing.

    Turnbull is so lacking in judgement and so terrified of losing his job that he could well start to placate the right in his own party. This is the final opportunity to show him for the emptiness that he is.

  38. Given the overwhelming yes response to SSM from the good people of Warringah wil Abbott, who has been sooooo concerned for democratic principles as regards Lib preselections, now respect that and fully support legislation to enact their will??

    Or will he wriggle and squirm on the “religious exemption” bullshit??

  39. I think we can today today wasn’t a loss for Turnbull, rather than a win.
    However that will last a day until the bill is presented in the Senate, then the Liberals are back to square one, in the credibility stakes.

    If the Smith bill passes parliament with only minor alterations (I.e nothing substantial), then they (and even Turnbull) could call it a win.

    Also what precisely does the right want regarding freedom of speech?
    They could say ‘according to the bible SSM is wrong’ or ‘I believe strongly SSM is wrong ‘ but what else do they want to say?

    It is like 18c it isn’t clear what they want to say that they can’t or won’t be able to say now.

    Given the result it will be interesting to see Labor’s tactics in parliament, do they accept Smith’s bill as a ‘starting point ‘ to then be watered down with exceptions or is it an end point?

  40. S

    Mugabe can take sole credit for taking a prosperous country and trashing it in just two generations.

    I like his Little Hitler Tache, though.

    I doubt that the military stepping in and topping him would return Z to democracy any time soon.

  42. GG:

    Just dropping in to express my congratulations to the yessirs. You are all justifiably happy today. That is a good thing and I’m not going to rain on the parade with any churlishness today.

    Cheers.

    Similarly, I was tempted to put the boot in to in my earlier comment, but decided to rise above it.

    See, you can be Greensborough Sweetie when you try.

  43. Andrew Hastie holds the seat of canning by 56.79 to 42.21 TPP. There was a 4.56% swing to the ALP in the last election. The seat voted 60% yes in the SSM survey and Hastie is going to ignore the voters and abstain. Will his abstention, combined with the current unpopularity of the COALition be enough to unseat him? Hope so.

    Tom.

  44. Speaking of thanks, I want to thank PB (I’m pretty new here) for the quality and generosity of the debate on ME , ruffled feathers and all, mine too, sorry, and also on s.44, from which I’ve learnt so much. I must do the roof. If you hear a THUMP, it’s me. (The first person I saw die in Intensive Care was from a domestic roof fall.) MOH here, never fear.

  46. Tom
    “Will his abstention, combined with the current unpopularity of the COALition be enough to unseat him? ”

    I hope so too. But it’s not going to happen. As another RWNJ once said: “Nope, nope, nope”.

  47. If the Smith bill passes parliament with only minor alterations (I.e nothing substantial), then they (and even Turnbull) could call it a win.

    If a large bloc of his party (perhaps even a majority in the Reps) vote against because it doesn’t protect their freedom to be bigoted arseholes? Even if they just drag it out debating how much they should be allowed to be bigoted arseholes before reluctantly voting yes?

    Yeah Nah.

    Political parties that are riven over an issue the public has just posted an overwhelming opinion in favour of haven’t won anything. They’re lost.

  48. An idea and a question emerges for me in this result.

    Idea: There are two political dimensions that each range between Conservative and Progressive leanings, (“C” and “P”). They are Economic concerns and Social concerns (“E” and “S”). (As an aside I can imagine other dimensions such as Environmental but Economic and Social would seem a usefully broad choice.) You then have four combinations into which political parties might be categorised. For instance based on the higher No vote the ALP might be considered Socially Conservative, or “SC”, and based on higher opposition to neo-liberalism might be considered as Economically Progressive, or “EP”. Thus the ALP might be SCEP. Similarly The Greens might be SPEP, LNP might be SPEC and the rest (Hanson, Bernadi et al.) might be SCEC. Actually if the “S” and “E” are taken as read the ALP are CP, Greens are PP, LNP are PC and the rest are CC.

    Question: Might it be possible, by combining this survey with election results at the electorate level, to tease out the proportion of the voting population that have each combination of these characteristics?

    If so, the implications for targeting messages to voters become obvious, as does how and/or why overlap occurs among the different groups. CP and PC are diametrically opposed leanings (ALP versus LNP), as are PP and CC (Greens versus others).

    Hmm.

  49. TTFN everyone. Gotta go patrol outside the pre-polling place for the arvo, urging people to vote against the coalition, coalminers, and anything else starting with coal.

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