What social media ads and polling tells us about the Voice to Parliament referendum campaign strategies so far
If you live in one of Australia’s smallest states, you might soon be inundated with ads about the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Campaign strategies are starting to take shape, and on one side at least, the path to victory appears to sidestep Australia’s biggest cities.
Facebook ad data shows that the Fair Australia and Yes23 pages are the biggest referendum-related spenders on the social network so far.
Both camps spent about $110,000 on Facebook ads between mid-March and mid-June, but they’re choosing to spend that money in very different ways.
While the Yes campaign is advertising roughly evenly across the states, the No campaign is clearly targeting its money more strategically.
In Queensland, the Fair Australia page is spending more than double the Yes23 page, while in Victoria, the reverse is true.
Why would the No campaign pay less attention to the two most populous states?
While in an election it’s the marginal seat voters that get the most attention, in a referendum we’re better off talking about the marginal states.
For the referendum to pass, a majority of voters in four states — the ACT and Northern Territory don’t count for this condition — must write “yes” on their ballot paper.
If three states vote “no”, it’s all over, even if most Australians voted “yes”.
Indeed, if Victoria and New South Wales vote in favour of the Voice, that alone could be enough to see the nation record a majority, even with three or four states against it.
Warren Mundine, a leading advocate for the No campaign, confirmed to the ABC’s RN Breakfast program in May that was precisely his side’s strategy.
“For us, it’s sensible, because they have to have the double whammy of a majority plus a majority of states,” he said.
“All we’ve got to do is pick up three states and that’s the end of the referendum.
“We will be targeting four states mainly … we’re feeling very confident at this stage, but there’s a hell of a long way to go yet.”
The four states being targeted
The four states to focus on are clear when you look at the limited public opinion polling that’s been published.
We don’t tend to report on individual polls at ABC News, but when taken all together, they can give us useful context on public opinion.
Here are three of the larger ones, with big enough samples to produce state-by-state estimates of support.
The biggest poll published so far was conducted in March by YouGov for the Yes campaign, with a sample size of more than 15,000 people.
Don’t focus too much on the numbers, what’s informing the campaign strategy here is the order of the states.
In all three of these polls, Victoria and New South Wales were in the top half of the states.
Queensland is consistently the least likely state to back the Voice, while Western Australia typically comes next.
Tasmania and South Australia have bounced around the state rankings more, but that’s unlikely to be because voters there are constantly changing their minds.
Rather, those are the states in which pollsters would be finding the smallest samples, and therefore the figures in those states have larger margins of error.
Across each of those polls, there was at least a 9 percentage point difference between the state with the most support and the least support.
That tells us quite clearly that it’s possible for most Australians to support the Voice, but still see the referendum fail.
And that’s the easiest way to defeat the referendum.
Where to from here?
More recent polls from different companies have shown tighter national figures than we saw in March.
The most extreme of these is a Resolve Strategic poll published in the Nine newspapers, which found 49 per cent support for the Voice, and a majority against the Voice in three states.
When considered in aggregate, the polls have been tightening all year, according to a polling average model devised by Professor Simon Jackman from the University of Sydney.
In the first few months of the year, support for Yes fell by about a quarter of a percentage point a week, but that has accelerated to almost half a percentage point a week in the last month or so.
The averaging model uses what we know about poll sample sizes and margins of error to also calculate a margin of error for the average.
The result is not a prediction of the referendum outcome, but an effort to interpret the existing published polling.
“You don’t need to fit a model to see that Yes has given up anywhere from four to perhaps as much as 10 points since the start of the year,” Professor Jackman said.
“The exact quantity is subject to some uncertainty, but Yes has shed support.”
But while the trend in published polls is clear, there is a lot of variation between them.
This month, both Resolve and Essential published polls in the same week estimating support for the Voice at 49 and 60 per cent respectively — an 11-point difference.
Some of the difference between polls is random and expected, but there are other factors, too. Professor Jackman points to differences in question wording, how pollsters choose who to poll, and how they weigh samples to make them representative as causes for variation between polls.
“What we’re seeing of late is a little on the large side, but all that goes to saying you’ve got to look at an average of the polls.”
The overall trend suggests we’re now in the zone where the least supportive states could tank the referendum, even if most Australians want the Voice.
The irony is that those states, being the least populated ones, are where we know the least about public opinion.
Of the eight successful referendums in Australian history, the states were unanimous in all but one.
There have been five where a majority of Australians voted in favour, but that nonetheless failed because at least three states blocked them.
In all of those, Tasmania was one of the states that voted “no”.
There’s a long way to go
The referendum is still months away, and the main campaign groups are yet to ramp up to full intensity.
As that starts to happen, and voters grow more aware of the detail of the proposal, it’s possible that published polling will shift.
It would be a mistake to conclude that tightening in published polls in the past month will continue until polling day.
Every poll is just a snapshot of a point in time, and we can expect both sides of the debate to react to each of those snapshots and adapt their campaigns accordingly.
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Facebook Faces Yet Another Outage: Platform Encounters Technical Issues Again
Uppdated: It seems that today’s issues with Facebook haven’t affected as many users as the last time. A smaller group of people appears to be impacted this time around, which is a relief compared to the larger incident before. Nevertheless, it’s still frustrating for those affected, and hopefully, the issues will be resolved soon by the Facebook team.
Facebook had another problem today (March 20, 2024). According to Downdetector, a website that shows when other websites are not working, many people had trouble using Facebook.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has had issues. Just a little while ago, there was another problem that stopped people from using the site. Today, when people tried to use Facebook, it didn’t work like it should. People couldn’t see their friends’ posts, and sometimes the website wouldn’t even load.
Downdetector, which watches out for problems on websites, showed that lots of people were having trouble with Facebook. People from all over the world said they couldn’t use the site, and they were not happy about it.
When websites like Facebook have problems, it affects a lot of people. It’s not just about not being able to see posts or chat with friends. It can also impact businesses that use Facebook to reach customers.
Since Facebook owns Messenger and Instagram, the problems with Facebook also meant that people had trouble using these apps. It made the situation even more frustrating for many users, who rely on these apps to stay connected with others.
During this recent problem, one thing is obvious: the internet is always changing, and even big websites like Facebook can have problems. While people wait for Facebook to fix the issue, it shows us how easily things online can go wrong. It’s a good reminder that we should have backup plans for staying connected online, just in case something like this happens again.
Christian family goes in hiding after being cleared of blasphemy
LAHORE, Pakistan — A court in Pakistan granted bail to a Christian falsely charged with blasphemy, but he and his family have separated and gone into hiding amid threats to their lives, sources said.
Haroon Shahzad, 45, was released from Sargodha District Jail on Nov. 15, said his attorney, Aneeqa Maria. Shahzad was charged with blasphemy on June 30 after posting Bible verses on Facebook that infuriated Muslims, causing dozens of Christian families in Chak 49 Shumaali, near Sargodha in Punjab Province, to flee their homes.
Lahore High Court Judge Ali Baqir Najfi granted bail on Nov. 6, but the decision and his release on Nov. 15 were not made public until now due to security fears for his life, Maria said.
Shahzad told Morning Star News by telephone from an undisclosed location that the false accusation has changed his family’s lives forever.
“My family has been on the run from the time I was implicated in this false charge and arrested by the police under mob pressure,” Shahzad told Morning Star News. “My eldest daughter had just started her second year in college, but it’s been more than four months now that she hasn’t been able to return to her institution. My other children are also unable to resume their education as my family is compelled to change their location after 15-20 days as a security precaution.”
Though he was not tortured during incarceration, he said, the pain of being away from his family and thinking about their well-being and safety gave him countless sleepless nights.
“All of this is due to the fact that the complainant, Imran Ladhar, has widely shared my photo on social media and declared me liable for death for alleged blasphemy,” he said in a choked voice. “As soon as Ladhar heard about my bail, he and his accomplices started gathering people in the village and incited them against me and my family. He’s trying his best to ensure that we are never able to go back to the village.”
Shahzad has met with his family only once since his release on bail, and they are unable to return to their village in the foreseeable future, he said.
“We are not together,” he told Morning Star News. “They are living at a relative’s house while I’m taking refuge elsewhere. I don’t know when this agonizing situation will come to an end.”
The Christian said the complainant, said to be a member of Islamist extremist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and also allegedly connected with banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, filed the charge because of a grudge. Shahzad said he and his family had obtained valuable government land and allotted it for construction of a church building, and Ladhar and others had filed multiple cases against the allotment and lost all of them after a four-year legal battle.
“Another probable reason for Ladhar’s jealousy could be that we were financially better off than most Christian families of the village,” he said. “I was running a successful paint business in Sargodha city, but that too has shut down due to this case.”
Regarding the social media post, Shahzad said he had no intention of hurting Muslim sentiments by sharing the biblical verse on his Facebook page.
“I posted the verse a week before Eid Al Adha [Feast of the Sacrifice] but I had no idea that it would be used to target me and my family,” he said. “In fact, when I came to know that Ladhar was provoking the villagers against me, I deleted the post and decided to meet the village elders to explain my position.”
The village elders were already influenced by Ladhar and refused to listen to him, Shahzad said.
“I was left with no option but to flee the village when I heard that Ladhar was amassing a mob to attack me,” he said.
Shahzad pleaded with government authorities for justice, saying he should not be punished for sharing a verse from the Bible that in no way constituted blasphemy.
Similar to other cases
Shahzad’s attorney, Maria, told Morning Star News that events in Shahzad’s case were similar to other blasphemy cases filed against Christians.
“Defective investigation, mala fide on the part of the police and complainant, violent protests against the accused persons and threats to them and their families, forcing their displacement from their ancestral areas, have become hallmarks of all blasphemy allegations in Pakistan,” said Maria, head of The Voice Society, a Christian paralegal organization.
She said that the case filed against Shahzad was gross violation of Section 196 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which states that police cannot register a case under the Section 295-A blasphemy statute against a private citizen without the approval of the provincial government or federal agencies.
Maria added that Shahzad and his family have continued to suffer even though there was no evidence of blasphemy.
“The social stigma attached with a blasphemy accusation will likely have a long-lasting impact on their lives, whereas his accuser, Imran Ladhar, would not have to face any consequence of his false accusation,” she said.
The judge who granted bail noted that Shahzad was charged with blasphemy under Section 295-A, which is a non-cognizable offense, and Section 298, which is bailable. The judge also noted that police had not submitted the forensic report of Shahzad’s cell phone and said evidence was required to prove that the social media was blasphemous, according to Maria.
Bail was set at 100,000 Pakistani rupees (US $350) and two personal sureties, and the judge ordered police to further investigate, she said.
Shahzad, a paint contractor, on June 29 posted on his Facebook page 1 Cor. 10:18-21 regarding food sacrificed to idols, as Muslims were beginning the four-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which involves slaughtering an animal and sharing the meat.
A Muslim villager took a screenshot of the post, sent it to local social media groups and accused Shahzad of likening Muslims to pagans and disrespecting the Abrahamic tradition of animal sacrifice.
Though Shahzad made no comment in the post, inflammatory or otherwise, the situation became tense after Friday prayers when announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers telling people to gather for a protest, family sources previously told Morning Star News.
Fearing violence as mobs grew in the village, most Christian families fled their homes, leaving everything behind.
In a bid to restore order, the police registered a case against Shahzad under Sections 295-A and 298. Section 295-A relates to “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs” and is punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years and fine, or both. Section 298 prescribes up to one year in prison and a fine, or both, for hurting religious sentiments.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, up from eighth the previous year.
Morning Star News is the only independent news service focusing exclusively on the persecution of Christians. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide complete, reliable, even-handed news in order to empower those in the free world to help persecuted Christians, and to encourage persecuted Christians by informing them that they are not alone in their suffering.
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