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The disparity in the Yes and No vote in the Voice referendum between different parts of Victoria, and across the country, has created a sense of division on attitudes towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and policy.

It seems this vote has divided our nation into a camp of inner-city elite Yes voters who are out of touch and wealthy, and salt-of-the-earth No voters who live in the suburbs and regional areas and are uninterested in reconciliation.

There is nothing to suggest that Australians reject the key principles the Voice was framed around.Credit: Matt Davidson

But what do we really know about each other as a result of the referendum? There is a real risk of reading too much into a single poll on a very specific and narrow question – we don’t know anything for sure about the individual characteristics or attitudes of Yes and No voters. Yet, in some ways the counting so far and pre-poll data has told us a lot.

As of around midday on Friday afternoon, there were about 14.2 million national votes counted, of which 38.8 per cent voted Yes, 60.2 per cent voted No, and 1 per cent voted informal. Using data from the 2021 census we can then model the predictors of the Yes percentage across Australia’s 151 electoral divisions.

Australian National University, and most other analysis, shows that the percentage of adults with a bachelor degree or higher in an area is positively associated with a Yes vote. Indeed, it is the strongest predictor.

What is more interesting is that when we control for education, income has the opposite association to some of the stories that are being told about the vote. Analysis suggests that the lower the income in the area, the higher the support for Yes. And this was also true with our pre-referendum surveys, which broadly found those on the lowest incomes had the highest Yes vote.

Take the electorates of Hawke and Calwell in Melbourne’s north-west. Both have a low percentage of people with a bachelor degree, but Hawke has fewer living in low-income households. However, the Yes vote was much higher in Calwell. Whichever way you look at it, education levels in the area matter, and they matter a lot. But income? Not so much.

Another narrative is that Labor electorates voted No to the Voice. Cherry-picking individual Labor
electorates might give that impression. But the data doesn’t support this. In our model, regions with a Labor member had a 7.5 percentage point higher Yes vote than those without a Labor member, once we control for other factors.

It is tempting to interpret these findings as information about how individuals voted. But we don’t have individual data yet. Pre-referendum data can help us question some of the current narratives, though.

Take migration. Electorates with a higher migrant population have a lower Yes vote. Some of the outer suburbs of our larger cities with high migrant populations have been identified as having low proportions of Yes votes and the assumption has followed that migrants aren’t supportive of First Nations policies.

But when we look at individuals not areas, those Australians who were born overseas were significantly more likely to say they would have voted Yes (at least as of August) than those born in Australia, with the difference even larger for those who were born overseas in a non-English speaking country.

Another important factor that has been widely misinterpreted is the support for Yes from electoral districts identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Most modelling suggests that a higher Indigenous share in the area is associated with a lower percentage of the population who voted Yes. The trouble comes from assuming that it relates to the voting patterns of individual Indigenous Australians.

All other data including individual-level data from just prior to the poll and from individual polling places suggest that Indigenous Australians were more likely to vote for the Voice than non-Indigenous Australians, and if it was an Indigenous-only vote it is likely to have been a majority saying Yes in a majority of states. We can conclude from the area-level data though that areas where a change in Indigenous policy is likely to have the greatest material impact are areas less likely to vote Yes.

Our data on individuals from just before the referendum also showed those who had little confidence in the federal government (as an institution) had a much lower probability of saying they would have voted Yes. At its heart, the Voice was about a new governance arrangement. It makes sense that only those who have confidence in an institution are likely to agree to giving it more power, even if that power is limited to making representations.

There is nothing to suggest that Australians reject the key principles the Voice was framed around.

The 2022 Reconciliation Barometer, which is one of the best datasets available on people’s nuanced views, shows that 93 per cent of all Australians believe it is important for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have a say in matters that affect them and 60 per cent of people agree/strongly agree many First Nations Australians are disadvantaged today because of past race-based policies.

The referendum question as posed was thoroughly rejected. That is clear. But it wasn’t rejected because Indigenous Australians didn’t want a Voice to parliament. It wasn’t rejected because migrants or low-income Australians were more likely to vote No. And it probably wasn’t rejected because people don’t want Indigenous Australians to have a say about the policies that affect them.

A careful look at the data suggests it is those with relatively low education and those with low trust in institutions who were not convinced by the proposal. Those who support the principle of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders having a say in policies that affect them must find ways to improve trust and confidence in institutions, carefully understand the views and the concerns of Australians who voted No, and find a mechanism which they can get on board with.

Professor Nicholas Biddle is associate director of the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods.

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