Hugh

• With early voting set to open next week for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, this is a critical time for campaigners to win over voters.
• If the same voting patterns apply to the referendum, this means more than half of Australians, particularly older voters, may have cast a vote before voting day on October 14.

What’s happening in the polls?

• According to Professor Simon Jackman’s averaging of the polls, “no” currently leads “yes” by 58% to 42% nationally.
• The rate of decline in support for “yes” continues to be about 0.75 of a percentage point a week.
• If this trend continues, the “yes” vote would sit at 39.6% on October 14, 5.5 percentage points below the “yes” vote in the republic referendum.

What’s happening in the news and social media?

• Using Meltwater data, we have seen a massive spike in Voice media coverage since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the referendum date at the end of August.
• In the most recent week we analysed, from September 14-21, we saw a huge jump of mentions of the Voice to Parliament (2.86 million) in print media, radio, TV and social media.
• This compares to about a quarter million mentions in the first week of the “yes” and “no” campaigns, which we documented in our last report of this series monitoring both campaigns.
• Media coverage of the Voice peaked on September 17 with 38,000 mentions, thanks to widespread coverage of the “yes” rallies that day around the country.

Who is advertising online?

• This week, we specifically turned our attention to the online advertising spending of the campaigns.
• The main online advertising spend is on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.
• In the last three months, its advertising expenditure exceeds $1.1 million, compared to just under $100,000 for Fair Australia, the leading “no” campaign organisation.
• The advertising spending data shows how drastically different the strategies of the two main campaigns are.

Referendum disinformation

• Studies show disinformation surrounding the referendum has been prevalent on X since at least March.
• To mitigate the harms, the AEC has established a disinformation register to inform citizens about the referendum process and call out falsehoods.
• We’ve identified three types of disinformation campaigns in the campaign so far.
• This disinformation type is not covered in the AEC’s register, as the organisation has no provisions to enforce truth in political advertising.
• All three types of disinformation campaigns attacking this referendum should concern us deeply because they threaten trust in our political institutions, which undermines our vibrant democracy.