Australia won’t know the results of the same-sex marriage survey until 10am on Wednesday morning. But there has been a growing assumption over the course of the campaign that the “yes” camp will win. Senior ministers such as Peter Dutton and Julie Bishop have said they think the “yes” vote will win. “Yes” campaigner Sarah Hanson-Young has said she’s “very, very confident”. And as voting closed last week, “no” spokesman Lyle Shelton conceded, “we’re chasing down a big lead”. Poll after poll has also found support for same-sex marriage is at about two to one. Just before the survey closed last week, a Guardian Essential Poll found 64 per cent of people who voted say they ticked “yes”.
As pollster John Stirton recently told Fairfax Media, “it’s very hard to see how the ‘no’ case could win from here unless an awful lot of people are straight-out lying to pollsters”.
But is a “yes” result the sure bet people think it is?
Earlier this month, Griffith University researchers suggested there could be a narrow “no” victory, based on an analysis of Australian tweets about same-sex marriage posted last month. The researchers used a similar method to accurately predict the last US presidential election, Brexit vote and Australia’s 2016 federal election.
Full Article: What happens if Australia votes “no” in the postal survey?.