Largest Negative Vote: Which Towns and Suburbs Showed the Highest Voice Referendum Results

The Voice to Parliament movement was soundly defeated across Australia, with the no vote in some rural and regional parts of the country well over 80 per cent.

Every state in Australia said no on Saturday night, with Queensland experiencing the strongest rejection of The Voice of any state or territory, with 68 per cent saying no on Sunday morning.

Only three of the Sunshine State’s 30 federal electorates supported the proposal — and it had the top six electorates with the largest no share in the country.

The rural constituency of Maranoa, led by National leader David Littleproud, which stretches from Warwick, Dalby and Kingaroy to the Northern Territory border, saw 84 per cent of voters vote no.

Rural areas overwhelmingly voted no, unlike some more densely populated urban areas of the country, where Australians strongly supported voting yes. Melbourne is top right, Sydney bottom right

Close behind was the traditionally working-class electorate of Flynn, where 83.6 percent of voters rejected the referendum question.

The same pattern was reflected in the neighboring rural electorates of Hinkler, Capricornia and Dawson, all of which saw more than 80 percent of the vote siding with No, according to early figures.

All regions are dominated by mining, agriculture and heavy industry.

This contrasts with some more densely populated urban areas of the country, where Australians strongly supported the Yes vote.

For example, inner-city Melbourne – a seat held by Greens leader Adam Bandt – had the highest proportion of yes voters in the country, with more than 78 per cent supporting the proposition.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared discouraged as he conceded defeat on Saturday evening.

The Prime Minister’s seat of Grayndler in Sydney’s inner west received the second largest share of yes votes, with 74.5 per cent support.

Meanwhile, maverick independent MP Bob Katter’s Kennedy seat in the Outback North, which covers the northern suburbs of Townsville, the southern suburbs of Cairns and the entire western Great Dividing Range, including Charters Towers and Mount Isa, saw 80.8 per cent of the electorate reject. the Voice proposal.

Mr Katter, who supported the No campaign because he claimed it divided people on the basis of race, said on Saturday he had threatened to “hit” government officials and a journalist over disagreements over how to improve health outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

“I don’t want to leave this life or this job knowing these people have a life expectancy of 56 years,” Mr Katter told the Townsville Bulletin.

He added: “I have tried every means possible, through ministers, through prime ministers, I have tried every means known to man and I have failed desperately.

The premier’s seat of Grayndler in western Sydney had the second highest share of yes votes, with 74.5 per cent support.

“So I scream and make people cry, I try to hit people, I don’t know what else to do.”

The three federal electoral seats in Queensland held by the Greens – Brisbane, Griffith and Ryan – were expected to lean Yes.

Meanwhile, the Rankin electorate, led by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, which is a safe Labor seat, voted no, as did other Labour-held federal electorates including Oxley and Blair.

The Gray electorate, which covers 92 per cent of South Australia and has one of the lowest average household incomes in the country, had the seventh highest no vote in the country at 79.7 percent.

Parkes, which covers just under half of all of New South Wales, stretching from Dubbo to Broken Hill and north to the Queensland border, comes next with 78.8 per cent.

Mallee in Victoria and Wright in Queensland round out the top 10 of non-voters with 78.5 and 77.8 per cent respectively.

Canning, Barker and O’Connor in Western Australia, Nicholls in Victoria and Groom in Queensland all had more than 75 per cent of voters supporting Number 1.

About 65 per cent of voters in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson, in Brisbane’s northern suburbs, rejected the proposal.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese consoles Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney after delivering a statement on the voice referendum result at Parliament House in Canberra, Saturday October 14, 2023.

A Yes supporter reacts during the official Inner West For Yes2023 referendum function at Wests Ashfield Leagues Club on October 14

“This is the referendum Australia didn’t need to have. The proposal and process should have been designed to unite Australians, not divide us,” Mr Dutton said.

“What we saw tonight was millions of Australians literally rejecting the Prime Minister’s defensive referendum.”

After Tasmania and New South Wales declared for the No side, South Australia’s loss around 7:30 p.m. on Saturday meant it was the end of the Yes campaign, even before the polls closed in Western Australia.

Even though votes were split along rural and urban lines, the reasons people voted no are more complex than where they live – according to Emeritus Professor of Sociology Andrew Jakubowicz of the University of Technology Sydney .

“Having a higher education in particular contributes to the likelihood that a person will vote yes,” he told the ABC.

“A lot of it depends on education, income, age and gender. There is also a factor that is a little more difficult to pin down.

“But it has been demonstrated in other situations, where more cosmopolitan and globally oriented people are likely to support something like this, as they were during the same-sex marriage plebiscite.”

The ACT, where more than 40 per cent of voters have a university degree, was the only state or territory to vote yes.