Australians have just voted in the first referendum this century and an analysis of voting patterns from Saturday night provides some valuable insights.
Here are five things we learned from looking closely at the results.
Coalition voters defeat the voice
Part of the reason the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians never really advanced under Coalition governments was because of hardline opposition to the concept within the Liberal and National party base. Peter Dutton’s hard no stance during the referendum campaign reflected this sentiment.
Saturday night’s count tells us Coalition voters largely held firm for no. Political analyst Simon Jackman says this is a “really important part of the story” of the defeat of the voice to parliament, “how the Coalition vote rallied behind the position of the party”.
The most emphatic no votes in the country were recorded in Coalition-held seats. Only 15% of voters in Maranoa, held by the National party leader David Littleproud, voted yes. In Dutton’s electorate of Dickson, the yes vote was 35%.
Liberals win the battle, but lose the war
While rusted-on Coalition voters played a significant role in sinking the voice, Saturday’s referendum vote reinforces the sense that the contemporary Liberal party has decoupled from its blue-ribbon metropolitan heartland. Seats now held by the teal independents rallied for yes.
“I was surprised, having looked at a lot of campaign data and polling data out of Yes23 – I’m surprised by how strongly the teal seats have gone yes,” Jackman says. “I wasn’t expecting [a percentage in the 60s] in Wentworth in particular. That’s a staggering result. It’s going to rock back on their heels Liberals who think [the teals phenomenon] is a protest vote and those electorates will get over it and come home. They are not coming home. None of this is helping Peter Dutton in those seats.”
Close calls in some Liberal-held seats will also be mind-focusing for party strategists. The Sydney seat of Bradfield, held by Liberal frontbencher Paul Fletcher voted 51% yes. Voters in Berowra (held by Julian Leeser, who supported the yes campaign) went very close: 47% said yes. Deakin (held by right-winger Michael Sukkar) was also very close: 49% of his constituents said yes.
A lot of the Labor heartland said no
While Dutton could count on support from his rusted-on cohort, Anthony Albanese couldn’t count on the same loyalty. The referendum voting patterns are a mixed bag for Labor.
There was a huge endorsement of yes from the prime minister’s constituents (74% of voters in Grayndler said yes to the voice). Tanya Plibersek’s constituents in Sydney were 71% yes. But the result was ugly in other parts of the country.
A majority of voters in Barton, the seat held by the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, said no to the voice. A significant number of Burney’s constituents are older migrants. Strategists report these voters weren’t persuaded by the yes case, although sentiment was more positive among more recent arrivals from China and South Asia.
In Labor-held seats in the Hunter valley, only 28% of Dan Repacholi’s constituents voted yes. In the neighbouring electorate of Paterson (held by Labor’s Meryl Swanson) only 29% supported the voice. In the seat of Blair in Queensland (held by Labor’s Shayne Neumann) support for yes was 30%. It was a similar picture in Rankin, the electorate held by the treasurer, Jim Chalmers (35% said yes). It was the same pattern in Melbourne. In the seat of Hawke in Melbourne’s western suburbs (held by Labor’s Sam Rae) yes polled 36%.
Divided sensibilities in the city and the regions
This is not a new story in Australian politics, or in any western democracy for that matter. But Saturday night’s referendum result reinforces the truism that voters in the inner city see the world differently from voters in the outer suburbs and regions. Jackman has this to say: “One thing I’m really taken by is the resilience of the so-called latte line, particularly in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.”
I particularly found this chart interesting. The axis of Yes and No support lines up quite closely with the 1999 Republic referendum - more than it does with the 2022 2PP, and much more than it does with 2PPs back in the late 90s. pic.twitter.com/clPMUDwPfn
— Ben Raue (@benraue) October 15, 2023
Jackman continues: “If it were possible somehow to show not only the voice vote, but also the same-sex marriage plebiscite and the republic referendum, you would see very similar maps of Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane. The boundaries aren’t the same, but if you could see that the pattern would be striking and I think that says something powerful about the contours of ideology in Australia.”
There are other statistics like income and education that also correlate with the yes vote in the same way that distance from urban centres does. However, this only tells us the characteristics of the areas that were more likely to vote yes, it does not necessarily mean that higher-income or more-educated people voted yes more frequently.
Did Indigenous Australians support the voice?
Yes campaign strategists say a number of voters got the impression it was OK to vote no because Indigenous Australians were divided on the merits of the voice. We don’t know how Indigenous people voted in the referendum, but we do know that in areas with a high proportion of Indigenous people voters generally supported the voice.
Some remote booths had support for yes running higher than 80%. Jackman has estimated the proportion of each polling place catchment (based on voting at the 2022 election) that is Indigenous. Based on this, the average yes vote at polling places where the estimated majority (> 50%) of voters were Indigenous was 63%.
• This article was amended on 16 October 2023 to correct the name of the electorate held by Meryl Swanson to Paterson. An earlier version of the article inadvertently referred to it as Swanson.
