New poll indicates “yes” result for marriage postal survey
A Newspoll published today by The Australian indicates a likely “yes” result for the marriage equality postal survey.
The poll returned results showing that 67 per cent of respondents are “definitely” going to vote in the survey, with a further 15 per cent saying they “probably” will.
Voters between 18 and 34 years old are the least likely to vote in the postal survey, echoing suggestions that administering the vote on marriage equality by post marginalises young people.
Results also showed a continuing majority support for marriage equality’s legalisation, with 63 per cent of voters saying they supported a change to the law.
30 per cent of those polled said they did not support a change, with Coalition voters, at 39 per cent, and One Nation backers predictably highest among them.
The Newspoll also asked those surveyed their thoughts on guarantees for “freedom of conscience, belief and religion” in any passed marriage equality legislation.
62 per cent of respondents were in favour of the guarantees, with 18 per cent against and 20 per cent uncommitted.
Senator Dean Smith’s private member’s bill, which was to be introduced before parliament prior to the postal survey’s hasty incipience, made comprehensive provisions for religious freedoms.
Hearteningly, older voters were overall less likely to vote “yes”, but support among voters over 50 was still higher than opposition.
Voters between 50 and 64 are 64 per cent in favour, while voters over 65 showed as 49 per cent likely to vote “yes” and 47 per cent likely to vote “no”.
The same poll showed support for the Turnbull government dropping further, with Labor leading the Coalition 54 to 46 on a two party-preferred basis.
Newspoll: 67 per cent say they’ll vote in the postal plebiscite, 63 per cent say they support same-sex marriage #auspol pic.twitter.com/TTXFP1GAN6
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) August 20, 2017
Yes the world will remain all good as long as the religious nutbags still have all THEIR rights.
Who are the 13% of Greens voters who will be voting No? A small handful I can understand but literally 1% of Australians are Greens voters who oppose same sex marriage, compared with about 2-4% of Australians who will ever enter a same sex marriage. That is incredible to me.
If there’s a reason why this so-called plebiscite is bullshit, surely that’s not a bad one. The people whose lives will benefit from marriage equality are the 2-4% who wonderfully get to marry their life partner, then there’s the probably around 30% who have close friends or family who will marry and who get to go to some great weddings. Meanwhile they’re not even certain of getting the support of all Greens voters in a world where even One Nation voters are slightly leaning towards marriage equality,
If ever you wanted a demonstration of what classic liberals like John Adams and John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of the majority”, that’s it in a nutshell.
This article needs to be rewritten. The poll’s been misinterpreted. It doesn’t say 67% of people will vote. The flip side of this would be that 54% of people are not going to vote, which would sum to 121%. What it actually says is that of those people who will vote, 67% will vote yes, 31% will vote No, and 2% are unsure.
It doesn’t give us the breakdown of what percentage will vote and what percentage won’t.