The first marriage equality survey forms are heading out today, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics beginning their staggered mail-out of 16 million ballots. It’s a very nervous time for campaigners from the ‘yes’ side, as everyone waits to see if the enthusiasm young people have for the issue turns into returned ballots.
There have been various polls that either soothe or affirm these fears, and these new results should go towards calming the souls of the people working to achieve equality. A Fairfax-Ipsos poll has shown that a huge 70% of people ‘certain’ to return a vote are planning on voting yes.
About 65% said they were ‘certain’ to take part in the survey, and of those about 70% said they would be returning a yes vote. They were asked how likely they were to participate on a scale of 1 to 10, and only the people who said they were a 10 were considered ‘certain’.
So that means a majority of people are absolutely deadset on definitely popping their form into a mailbox, and most of them are deadset on having the little ‘yes’ box checked. Nice.
In a disappointing stat, it turns out that 72% of women said they were definitely going to return the form, compared to only 59% of men.
Come on dudes, wtf.
Anyway, these numbers match those reported in a similar poll last year, it’s almost like THE COUNTRY WANTS MARRIAGE EQUALITY AND AREN’T GOING TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS SO JUST LET’S DO IT?
This is all definitely good news for same-sex marriage campaigners, and another stat from the results will hopefully also help ease concerns that complacency among young people could see survey forms not being returned.
The poll found that expected participation is actually pretty much equal across all age groups, with 64% of 18 to 24-year-olds also classing themselves as ‘certain’ to vote.
Jessica Elgood from Ipsos said that this part of the polling actually surprised her.
Generally when you’ve got non-compulsory voting you see the older cohort turning out to vote. What’s quite unusual here is we’ve got equally high likely turnout amongst the younger vote, which personally I think speaks to the salience of the issue for young people.
That’s it, exactly. Young people know how important this is for the LGBTQI community, they want their mates to have equal rights, they want this issue done and dusted, and they want people to have equality.
Now all we’ve got to do to get it is to make sure you return that ballot when it arrives. I believe in you.
