Non-voters could decide same-sex marriage poll

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The YES vote in the same-sex marriage survey (“Survey”) is home and hosed if a recent Fairfax/Ipsos poll (“Poll) translates into reality…writes David Singer.

The Poll indicates that:

1. 65% of eligible voters will vote and
2. 70% of those voting will vote YES and 30% will vote NO.

Table 1 shows the likely result of the Survey based on 15,676,659 voters eligible to vote at the 2016 Federal Election for the House of Representatives (“2016 Election”):

Table 1.

5486831 voters (35%) according to the Poll won’t be voting in the non-compulsory Survey. This percentage is considerably higher than the 9.59% of voters who voted informal or did not vote at the compulsory 2016 Federal Election.

For the NO vote to have any chance of winning in the Survey:

1. the non-voter turnout must be reduced from 35% to 15% or less and
2. the YES vote must not exceed 60%.

How would those predicted 5486831 non-voters actually vote if voting was compulsory?

One could reasonably assume most would vote NO rather than YES for the following reasons:

1. The YES campaigners are more passionate, better organised and use social media more effectively than the NO campaigners
2. The YES campaign has so far been endorsed by at least 2061 organisations including 795 Corporations, 52 councils, 22 Unions, 260 Non-profit and 52 academic institutions.

YES voters certainly won’t be sitting on the sidelines and not voting.

Non-voters therefore could comprise a fertile field for NO campaigners.

Getting those non-voters to fill in and return their voting forms could make a huge difference to the result especially if:

1. The predicted non-voters are reduced from 35% (5486831) to 15% (2351499)
2. 90% of the captured non-voters (3135332) vote NO (2821799) and 10% vote YES (313533)
3. The YES vote is only 60 % – not 70% – as a later Newspoll is now suggesting.

Given this scenario the result would be:

Table 2

Confident predictions of a majority YES vote therefore need to be treated with some caution.

A former Justice of the High Court of Australia – Michael Kirby – has aptly summed up the survey:

 “It’s a completely novel, voluntary, non-binding, non-compulsory vote of a few citizens and it’s just something we’ve never done in our constitutional arrangements of Australia.”

Key to the final result will be determined by how many of those citizens do not vote.

It seems inconceivable that only 65% will vote – but that is what the Fairfax/Ipsos poll tells us will happen.

Hopefully other polls will ask this specific question when surveying voters.

The NO campaign needs to make sure there is a better turnout than 65% of eligible voters.

If the threshold of non-voters exceeds 15% – then the YES campaign seems more likely to succeed. If that threshold of 15% is not reached then the NO campaign is in with a very good chance of winning.

Voters who have damaged, lost or not received their Survey papers can request a replacement survey voting form – but will need to provide a driver’s licence or Australian passport details to verify their identity – following which:

• They will be emailed within 48 hours if their identity has been verified.
• They will be sent a new survey form in 7–10 working days.
• Any previous forms will be invalidated.

NO campaign advertisements and NO doorknockers should certainly concentrate on getting those 5486831 predicted non-voters to vote.

Retaining the ancient tradition and understanding of marriage is the prize.

David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network