The Voice to Parliament Referendum Is This Week. What Do the Voter Polls Predict?

The Voice to Parliament referendum is this week and the final voter poll results have been released. With five days to go, here’s where we’re at.

On Saturday, Australians will vote on whether an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice acting as a government advisory body should be enshrined in the Constitution. More than two million people have already voted early. 

If passed, the Voice will make representations to the parliament and the executive government on issues relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and would be able to advise on improving programs and services for those people. But it won’t be in charge of managing any money or delivering those services. 

There are a few different polls which have been collecting voter survey data on the voice and it should be noted that they’re not always right, have wrongly predicted election outcomes in the past and most of them have pretty small sample sizes, this time they range from a few hundred to almost 5000 people. 

All of them however found No was well ahead of Yes. The most recent and the biggest poll was from the Resolve Political Monitor, which surveyed 4728 people Australia-wide between September 22 and October 4 and 56% said they were against the constitutional change and 44% said they for for it.

The ABC averaged all the poll results and found Yes support was at 41.2% while No was 58.8%. To put that in context, the Yes support is worse now than it was for the last referendum in 1999, which failed with about 45 per cent support. 

Polls since last year have shown support for a constitutional voice completely reverse. In August 2022 support for Yes was at around 65%. 

But while No is ahead now, the polls have shown a very modest lift in Yes support in recent days and weeks. According to Resolve it has increased from 43 to 44% in the past month, which Resolve director Jim Reed said was the first stabilisation of Yes support since April.

Looking at the states we see a different picture again. Tasmania is the only state with a majority in favour of the change at 56% Yes.

Every other state is in favour of No with NSW at 52%, Victoria at 54%, South Australia at 55%, WA at 61% and Queensland: 62%. The poll didn’t collect data from the territories. 

Speaking to ABC Radio National this morning Indigenous leader and Yes campaigner Noel Pearson said:

"Australians who approach the ballot box this weekend will need to contemplate that this is no ordinary vote … [it's a] critical, historical and ethical choice. Yes and No are not equivalent choices ... Yes is a moral choice, and No would be a travesty for the country and we will possibly never live it down.”

On the No side, “Black No campaigner” Boe Spearim also told the ABC over the weekend that "it’s only an advisory body, it doesn't have any sort of powers, there are all these holes which are very shallow gains for our mob," 

"There are all these red flags … we are owed so much more than this."

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said today he wasn’t ruling anything out, and We’ll have to wait and see what the vote brings.

“Some arrogance has crept into the No side, he said,” but it’s a campaign based upon fear and it’s similar to the sort of arguments that were put prior to the apology to the stolen generations. And if people think about that … there weren’t any negative consequences for anyone.

“Giving people some extra say and some rights, that doesn’t take away from anyone else [and that] is what is proposed here.”

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Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.