The Voice to Parliament referendum is on track to lose all six states and win only 22 of the 151 electorates in Australia’s federal parliament, according to modeling by an internationally renowned pollster.
UK-based research group Focal Data predicts the nation will vote No 61 per cent to the Yes campaign’s 39 per cent in Saturday’s referendum after polling 4,500 Australians and modeling the result in each seat.
The only strong Yes seats are in the inner cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s seats in Grayndler and Sydney.
The Yes campaign has also won strongholds controlled by the Greens, including Adam Bandt’s Melbourne electorate and the seats of Brisbane and Griffith in south-east Queensland, which were won by young Greens Stephen Bates and Max Chandler. Mather in the last elections.
But 129 seats out of 151 in the House of Representatives are on track to vote No according to poll estimates, including a number of teal electorates in Sydney, including Warringah on the northern beaches and Wentworth in the eastern suburbs. .
Even Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney’s seat of Barton, in Sydney’s southern hinterland, is expected to vote No by a slim margin: 53 per cent to 47 per cent, the data found.
One seat in Queensland – the northern seat of Bob Katter’s Kennedy, which is home to Cairns and Townsville – is predicted to vote with 84 per cent No Voice votes. Eight of the 10 seats most likely to vote No are based in Queensland.
If the polls are correct, the No vote will triumph in all states: the worst case scenario for Albanese and the Yes supporters. A referendum needs a majority of states and a majority of the national vote to be carried out.
Only 22 electorates (darkest purple on map) are on track to vote Yes in the upcoming Indigenous Voice referendum to Parliament, according to a survey by an international polling group, but there are another 15 electorates (light purple on map ) who are very close to voting Yes with 47 percent support or more
The Prime Minister and his son, Nathan, cast their votes on October 7.
Both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Grayndler seat and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Sydney seat are on track to vote Yes
While several polls, including Redbridge, Newspoll and Essential, have tracked the decline in the Yes vote throughout the campaign, this is the most detailed projection to date.
Seats in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth tend to vote Yes, but in the suburbs voters are less convinced.
The City of Sydney is recording the highest voter support for the Voice yet, with 70 per cent in favour, followed by the Prime Minister’s Grayndler with 64.5 per cent.
Melbourne has an approval rating of 64 per cent, Canberra at 62 per cent and Adelaide at 59 per cent.
Beyond that, most Yes suburbs are just barely getting over the line, the data suggests.
“This leaves Australia more divided than ever between inner city and countryside,” a Focal Data spokesperson said in a statement.
“More broadly, they are consequences that could have been drawn directly from the analysis of Brexit in the UK, except that the ‘Yes’ side fares materially worse than the Remain side.”
Bennelong in New South Wales (which includes Chatswood, Ryde and Gladesville), Ryan in Queensland and Chisholm in Victoria (which includes Glen Waverely and Mulgrave) have support of around 50 per cent, while Cooper in Victoria has 51 percent.
Greenway and Kingsford Smith in New South Wales, Wills in Victoria, Griffith in Queensland, Bean in ACT and Perth all recorded yes votes with a support rate of around 52 per cent.
The rest of the Yes electorates (Clark in Tasmania, Fenner in the ACT, Higgins and Macnamara in Victoria, and North Sydney and Reid in New South Wales) have support between 56 and 57 per cent.
According to the data, no Liberal Party seats are on track to vote Yes.
The referendum will be held on October 14 and polls suggest that it will be defeated
But there are 15 seats where La Voz has the support of 47 percent or more of poll participants, meaning the referendum could still prevail in those areas given a small margin of error.
The wealthy seats held by ‘teal independents’ are divided in the Voice. While Kylea Tink’s North Sydney is on track to vote Yes, Monique Ryan’s Kooyong and Allegra Spender’s Wentworth are narrowly voting No at this stage, with 49 per cent support in the polls.
In Warringah, which includes wealthy northern beaches suburbs, Voice support in the latest poll is around 44 per cent, while it falls to 37 per cent in the northern beaches suburbs of Mackellar.
Indigenous Australian Minister Linda Burney’s seat of Barton, which covers Kogarah, Bexley and Hurstville, is one of 15 seats with more than 47 per cent support, but less than the 50 per cent threshold needed to vote Yes.
Queensland is leading the charge against the Voice in the Focal Point poll, representing eight of the top 10 electorates with the highest number of votes against.
In Bob Katter’s Kennedy electorate, including Cairns and Townsville, opposition to the Voice is polling at around 84 per cent, while Nationals leader David Littleproud’s huge Maranoa division sits at around 81 percent.
Capricornia, Dawson, Flynn, Hinkler, Wilde Bay and Wright in Queensland oppose Voice with rates of 75 per cent or more, according to the data.
Mallee in Victoria and O’Connor in Western Australia are the only two electorates outside Queensland where opposition to Voice is 75 per cent or more.
The latest poll comes after The Australian published the latest Newspoll, which found support for Voice to Parliament declined ahead of this week’s referendum.
National support for the Voice fell to 34 per cent in the last fortnight, before Australians cast their vote on October 14.
The referendum’s approval rating has hit its lowest point since it was first proposed, while support for the No vote rose two points to 58 per cent.
About eight percent of voters are still undecided, but since the “don’t know” category has been removed as an option, the split becomes 37/63 in favor of the No vote.
The survey, which surveyed 1,225 voters nationally between October 3 and 6, found a worrying trend for the Yes campaign among its key group of voters.
For the first time, support for the referendum fell below 50 percent among voters aged 18 to 34.
Young voters who intend to vote No rose eight percentage points to 49 percent, and those who plan to vote Yes fell four points to 46 percent.
Support for Voice fell to 34 per cent in the last fortnight before Australians cast their vote on October 14.