I have a live results feature standing ready for service this evening, which will presume to offer projections according to a somewhat experimental method that will be explained further below, together with individual results pages by electoral division featuring booth results displayed in table and map form (click on “activate” at the bottom of the individual seat pages for the latter). It may be the only place where the latter data will be available online, not counting the Australian Electoral Commission media feed from which it will be extracted.
Some final polls are in, with pollsters collectively offering a fairly wide spread that means the contest for post-result bragging rights is wide open:
• The Australian has a Newspoll result that concurs with others in finding movement back to yes – though by an entirely insufficient three points to 37%, with no down one to 57%. The 1413 sample from this poll has been combined with 1225 sample poll from last week to produce state breakdowns with no leading 54-41 in New South Wales, 51-43 in Victoria, 65-30 in Queensland, 65-28 in Western Australia, 60-33 in South Australia and 55-38 in Tasmania. The new batch of polling means we are also treated to a second set of Newspoll federal voting intention numbers in a week, in this case putting Labor ahead 54-46 (53-47 last week) from primary votes of Labor 36% (up two), Coalition 35% (down one), Greens 12% (steady) and One Nation 6% (up one).
• A JWS Research poll in the Financial Review has no at 52% and yes at 39%, converting to 57-43 after exclusion of the undecided. The poll was conducted Friday to Monday from a sample of 922.
• The Australian related yesterday that a poll conducted from October 1 to 9 by DemosAU, whose director George Hasanakos had a polling analysis website back in the day called Poliquant, had no leading 57% to 30% in both Queensland and Western Australia.
The projection model in my results will use the seat-level estimates from Focaldata’s multi-level regression with post-stratification exercise as a baseline for measuring the results as they are reported. However much the results that are in differ from what Focaldata predicted will then be projected on to Focaldata’s overall results at state level. Doubtless this will be noiser than the booth-matched swings methods that can be applied at elections, but it should at least go some way towards correcting for the peculiarities of the early numbers.
My attention this evening will be focused on the referendum, but I will have some sort of a post up following the progress of counting in New Zealand, a dedicated thread for which is here.
VOTE YES AUSTRALIA!!!
JUDGEMENT DAY IS UPON US.
No point in regretting later.
First in line at Willoughby Public.
Typical gorgeous Sydney day
It has got very cloudy in Melbourne in the last hour. It was quiet sunny at 7.
I am still expecting the result to be fairly clear by 7.30 AEDT (which is when SBS coverage is set to being…. always late to the show). This is because the votes are fairly easy to count in referendums because:
1. Determining a “yes” or “no” is a valid vote is quicker than checking that multiple boxes are all numbered.
2. There are only two piles as opposed to multiple piles in an election.
3. There is only a single question with one ballot. So reconciling the ballots will be quicker.
And if any of New South Wales, Victoria or Tasmania looks like it has rejected the proposal then it will be all over red rover as Queensland and WA look like write-offs.
My prediction is No winning by 10 points or more, 55-45 or 56-44, maybe Victoria or Tasmania being the only states to vote Yes.
The likely landslide wins for NO in QLD and WA will cancel out any momentum YES might get from NSW and VIC.
Perfect tranquility and efficiency here at Woodbine in Sydney’s SW. The queue at 8am was more focused on a troublesome local roundabout than anything else. Relevance? Hard to say.
I am hopeful but not optimistic based on the polls and chatting to friends.
If it goes down it’ll prove a few things, like referenda don’t succeed without bipartisan support. The Liberals and Nationals are racist parties. People who vote No are either racist, stupid, selfish or lazy.
What a lost opportunity.
What now for the other end of the spectrum (Thorpe et al)?
Having just voted, there were half a dozen handing out “Vote No” material, ALL of Asian appearance.
And NOT people you see around the neighborhood, unlike those handing out “Vote Yes” material.
Prediction:
No wins nationally with a 6 in front and all states.
Further proof that the average Australian is a selfish, narrow-minded jerk.
My observation of my own immediate family is that their no votes are simply a result of only getting their coverage from Ch7/9 etc, where the false talking points were never properly countered
No referendum has succeeded without bipartisan support, and plenty with bipartisan support have also failed. I expect this will be no different.
What is different is the backpedalling among the politicians who have campaigned hard against this proposal. I just heard the Nationals leader saying it will all be Albanese’s fault if the referendum fails.
Not people like him who have actively campaigned against it? Dutton has been rehearsing the same spiel – it seems they don’t want to ‘own’ the progeny of their concerted efforts. Very strange.
Voted yes but with no expectation yes will win
Grabbed a bacon and egg sandwich afterwards
There was a large amount of no signage and nothing from yes. No line up so was very quick.
It will be Albanese’s fault if the referendum fails. He declared politics was different and he didn’t need bipartisanship to win. Politics is not different.
It seems the ALP idea of bipartisanship is that the LNP just has to roll over and agree to everything we say, and then we’ll have bipartisanship. There was no genuine attempt to bring Dutton and his conservative rump on board with any concession. John Black summed it up best https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/tracking-the-voice-decline-starts-with-albanese-20231004-p5e9u0
The headline attributed to Tingle has currency
That said, I would promote a further Referendum begging that bodies of influence aimed at government, so the raft of Organisations from the Business Council of Australia, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the IPA, religions et al be banned along with Unions
These bodies generate the revenue and therefore the positions of influence they trade on
So they have an enduring voice, often to our detriment
Given our First Nations people are denied an entrenched voice thru the Constitution why should these organisations of privilege thru their financial resources and positions in society continue to have influence?
My prediction, with the huge gap in polling between demographics. Significantly more than you’d usually see on the TPP from what I can tell. Seat by seat variations will be a wild ride
The early booths will swing hard no but counting tonight will be more skewed towards yes than some will expect. Probably landing in the mid 40s by the end of the night. Put pre-poll and postals will completely shatter any illusion of a close result we might even theoretically get
I think only Vic and Tas pass it with the territories very strongly in Yes. WA and Qld will be in the 30s, overall it’ll be low 40s
And “Peggy”, the question is simple
From there it goes to the Parliament- with the authority of the Constitution of the Nation
In the parliament politics will no doubt play its part – noting what the Liberal Party of today offers
The question today is not about politics
It is a question of representation – putting thought to the parliament of the Nation, an elected House
Below is the last paragraph from today’s Saturday Paper. I think it succinctly sums up where we stand as a people.
“For all the misinformation and deceit, all the lies of the campaign, we will be left with one ugly truth: given the chance, Australia would still sooner destroy Indigenous people than listen to them as equals. The central impulses of colonisation are all still there, brutal and unrepentant.”
The central impulses of colonisation are all still there, brutal and unrepentant.
They’re not lighting Parliament House in Aboriginal flag colours.
But we’re literally banned (by a Labor government) from protesting against a 24-hour deadline for one million indigenous people (half of them children) to remove themselves or be massacred with white phosphorous.
Except, for the benefit of the Saturday Paper writer, 1967 showed the opposite was true. Because in 1967 it was framed that people were voting for equality. In 2023 for better or worse it’s been framed that people are voting to grant constitutional privilege based on indigineity.
There’s an ugly underbelly of racism in every society including ours, but a better run yes campaign would have overcome it
I am pessimistic about Yes winning. I am in despair over humans in general, but Dutton has reminded us that Australians are mostly a mob of racist barstoods.
I expect today to be a day of shame.
Dutton and Littleproud hate signalled to racists for political gain. That’s the only ‘campaign’ that needs to be a target of opprobrium.
Peggy,
Dutton never had any intention to come onboard. I fail to see how supporting a Yes vote, the only decent and fair thing to do, is ‘rolling over. ‘
That is the attitude that led to this shameful day.
@Peggy
It all comes back to the lack of bipartisan support. This could well land towards the higher end of the range for referenda that lacked bipartisan support. With bipartisan support we would’ve been looking at a result in the mid 60s rather than the low 40s we’ll probably get
I don’t blame the yes campaign for that. I blame the political opportunists on the conservative side of the house
Peggy, do you think that the 1967 referendum result would be repeated today?
I’ll state my extended view again, the last time I did that a couple of months ago I got told my view is shit, so am expecting the same response as this blog seems to be predominantly populated by cheerleaders for the left, rather than people that are serious about debate and acknowledging the faults of the side they support.
1. I voted yes, just in case anyone cares.
2. The yes case was doomed by the fateful decisions made by the PM in the early few months of this year and the series of hubristic miscalculations he made.
3. History says you don’t win referenda without bipartisan support. But Albo was so giddy by the success of the Teals in the general election and the false equivalence of the SSM plebiscite, he starts going round telling everyone “politics is different” and I don’t need bipartisanship this time.
4. Given point 3, he thinks he can bury the liberals for a generation. At that stage at the start of the year the thing is riding high, 60%+ support and they haven’t even started campaigning yet. So when Dutton writes Albo a letter asking for clarification on 15 points before he declares his position, Albo sneers at it and refuse to answer any of them. Even though surely he knows the only way Dutton is ever going to offer bipartisanship is if he could go back to his conservative wing and say ‘look, I extracted these concessions, we don’t like it but let’s just support this and get it out of the way’. But no, Albo knows best, he doesn’t need Dutton, he doesn’t need bipartisanship, Albo’s giving them nothing and so when this thing wins without them Albo will be the hero and Dutton a total irrelevancy.
5. Given points 3 and 4, in his mind the only way this can fail is if it’s a re-run of the republic referendum where progressive supporters of the idea vote no because they don’t like the model. So there will be no model. Albo ignores the warnings about what happens when you create a political vacuum for a fear campaign to occupy, he thinks politics is different and he has Dutton where he wants him. So no detail and a vacuum results, now joyfully occupied by the No side.
I know people that can’t see any fault on their side will be lining up tonight to skewer that racist Dutton for the dark forces he’s unleashed. The real lesson is politics is not different, and Albo badly miscalculated. This referendum was lost because of his hubris many months ago, that created the circumstances for a racist fear campaign and has set reconciliation back a generation.
peggy “Albo sneers ”
Never fkn happened. The votes haven’t even been counted and already the LNP voters are stating “i voted yes, not like those other guys. It’s Albos fault”
There was no bringing Dutton across to yes. It is delusional to say that there was. His 15 questions were not an attempt to gain common ground, they were groundwork for the campaign that followed
Dutton knows full well how Parliament works and how it interacts with the constitution. He was also a minister throughout the majority of the process of creating the amendment we are now voting on. He was invited to and involved in the process at every step
The ALP really only had two options. Go ahead with the referendum that had been opposed by and continues to be opposed by political opportunists on the conservative side of politics. And probably fail. Or not do it at all and guarantee it doesn’t happen
Sky says:
Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 1:17 pm
There was no bringing Dutton across to yes. It is delusional to say that there was. His 15 questions were not an attempt to gain common ground, they were groundwork for the campaign that followed
Dutton knows full well how Parliament works and how it interacts with the constitution. He was also a minister throughout the majority of the process of creating the amendment we are now voting on. He was invited to and involved in the process at every step
The ALP really only had two options. Go ahead with the referendum that had been opposed by and continues to be opposed by political opportunists on the conservative side of politics. And probably fail. Or not do it at all and guarantee it doesn’t happen
__________
This. You just cannot get a person that boycotts an apology to the Stolen Generation to say Yes to a voice for the same people. Simples.
And if Albo pulled the referendum after Dutton was voted Opposition Leader then it doesn’t happen and Albo is portrayed as a coward a la Rudd and climate change. This is a worse outcome. Also simples.
Got a feeling there’s going to be a lot of wet sheets hung out to dry tomorrow.
@Peggy – ah yes, Albo created the racists, sure.
No, they were always there.
Reconciliation is not set back, and it’s better not to be blind to where things really stand, rather than in the Polyanna world where corporate political correctness and welcome to country ceremonies make it incorrectly look like all Australians are on board.
The reality is that Albo promised to uphold the Uluru Statement both as the right thing to do and maybe with an expectation of a Frydenberg led opposition who’d be pliant. What else could he do? Not make that promise? Change course because Dutton became leader instead?
I think there was a third option which was to wait until it had a possibility of succeeding (i.e. follow the advice of the expert panel on constitutional recognition). Because the other two options are both guarantees of failure, with a No vote actually worse than nothing because it means nothing in the future also.
Watermelon: “wait”
And you would have been screeching “Albo is a coward!!”
And when I say ‘you’ I mean you specifically and generally.
Watermelon says:
Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 1:36 pm
I think there was a third option which was to wait until it had a possibility of succeeding (i.e. follow the advice of the expert panel on constitutional recognition). Because the other two options are both guarantees of failure, with a No vote actually worse than nothing because it means nothing in the future also.
_________
Watermelon, I provided detailed commentary the other day on this in response to nath. You are referring to the 2012 expert panel for constitutional recognition, not the Voice. The 2017 Referendum Council (as well as other bodies) are broadly consistent with the 2012 recomendations. Further, Dutton withdrew bipartisanship after the announcement of the referendum. Moreover, your third option of waiting is not what was asked and there was and is no guarantee of failure. Finally, a no vote is not worse than no vote as it exposes our nation to the reality that they are not as reconciled as they thought. We need to try harder. Sunlight is the best medicine.
NB:- this is all being said for others as I know there is no persuading you of being muddleheaded.
@Peggy – Dutton could not have been brought into the tent. Total furphy, like anything else John Black writes.
I do agree the Yes campaign could have been much better run – we have talked about that endlessly here on PB – they tried to run it like the Marriage Equality yes campaign, likely misled by the early polling that made them think the Voice was already widely beloved, and it took them until the final month to pull their finger out. But Albo is not in charge of that campaign. His own messaging has been pretty good whenever I’ve seen it.
The difference with 1967 is that really was about equality, and this is about equity which is far harder to sell. People have to accept that Indigenous people are disadvantaged and need help catching up, which doesn’t go over well with other people who perceive themselves as disadvantaged (even when that’s not true) not to mention the racists.
Arky I didn’t say he created the racists. I said he created the circumstances for a racist fear campaign to get traction by taking the path he took and eschewing bipartisanship (unless, as I said in an earlier post, you seriously expected that bipartisanship equals the LNP just agreeing to do everything the ALP wants).
I do accept that Albo possibly had some expectation Lesser could bring Dutton along, Lesser might have even misled Albo on that point, who knows? But it gets back to “Politics is different” Albo miscalculating and ignoring the lessons of history.
And in your second post reply to me – I largely agree with your last two paragraphs
LOL Dutton was never coming along haha you have to be seriously deluded to think that.
Dutton was NEVER EVER coming on board – putting whatever his own views are to one side, I predicted a year ago Dutton would oppose the Voice to damage Albo in an attempt to kick off leadershit in the ALP.
Nothing could be done or said.
Because there’s no way Dutton can win on his own merits.
Been at the polling booth from 8 to12 in outback Victoria (Indi). No “no”campaign presence at all. It is fair to say that everyone who came to vote knew what they were voting about and how they were voting.
Plenty of yes voters and plenty of No voters. My observation was that, almost as a rule, yes voters seemed naturally of more cheerful, generous disposition and no voters more miserable misanthropic sorts. This could be tested by just seeing them get out of their cars!
No, that’s ridiculous. I have never had any illusions about the average Australian voter. I absolutely would not have faulted Albo for sparing the country and its indigenous people the indignity of this shameful outcome. I would have preferred that the Uluru program live to fight another day then be crushed forever under a massive NO victory. The fact that Albo went ahead with it knowing it would 100% lose proves to me that he never really gave fuck.
I agree. Before the 2022 election the ALP could have promised to hold the referendum when the ALP, the LNP, and the Greens are all committed to campaigning for Yes. It would have been been a pragmatic and understandable decision. Promising a referendum in the first term of a Labor Government was a respectful response to the Uluru process. However, it has resulted in a wasted referendum, and God knows when there’ll be another one. It has been a quarter of a century since the last referendum about a republic and there is still no hint of another one on the horizon.
Very well put Griff, a No vote is much better than no vote.
And for the reason you give. We are not a reconciled country. We are not apologetic for the dispossession. We are as ignorant as the opposition indigenous affairs minister Price as to the deleterious consequences of colonialism. Presumably this sunshine is why Thorpe (disgustingly) wants a No.
The greens frantically looking for some scrubbing brushes so they can wash the stink off themselves for their own lack of support for the voice. “It’s albos fault”
Where is Bandt, anyway? Anyone seen him?
Nikki Savva got it right: if the referendum goes down, it will be the LNPs fault, pure and simple.
Anything else you can point to remains secondary to this core factor. Because if there’d been bipartisanship, nothing mentioned above would have mattered more than a few percent.
And already you can see them running from the scene of the crime. They know it was low and dirty.
What they dont yet realise is that they’ve rendered themselves unelectable in the process. But that will become plain as day within months
Anyway, post-Mortems can wait. on to the count!
My GOD – there is NO circumstance where the Coalition would have backed this in.
It was a political calculation from the Liberals – Albo made a promise to do it this term – he did.
This was the only path with this framing. Waiting for the Coalition to come to the party was and is a pointless exercise.
Griff Dutton didn’t “withdraw bipartisan support” after the thing was announced. He never pledged it in the first place -only the possibility. I don’t know if he was lying about being open to the possibility, but I do think that Albo thought it would be an SSM-style wedge which is why he didn’t even try to secure it before calling the thing. I also don’t agree that a massive NO victory is preferable to not having a referendum before it could be won – well done, we proved we are racist now what.
Apologetics for Dutton before a vote has been counted.
The Indigenous Constitutional Convention that led to the Uluru Statement and then the referendum was started by the LNP under Turnbull with bipartisan support from the then opposition leader Shorten. Dutton torched that bipartisan agreement because he grokked that kicking aboriginal people would shore up his core constituency.
But it’s albos fault apparently.
Will not having No campaigners out the front make a difference?
I went to my polling place in South Western Sydney there was not one NO sign or person there, Only YES people handing out how to votes
Five votes from my household for Yes, we’ve done our bit.
I still believe there should have been two referendum questions, one on Constitutional recognition and a second on the Voice.
davidh: “I still believe there should have been two referendum questions, one on Constitutional recognition and a second on the Voice.”
Cue the screeches “I’m voting no because Albos cowardice in not implementing the Uluru Statement!!!”
What happens with the territories votes? Are they included with a states vote or do they just count for the total?
BTW This is a huge waste of money