Yes campaign struggling despite gaining twice the exposure as No camp

ABC NEWS (Australia)

New research suggests that mainstream and social media coverage of the campaign for the Voice to Parliament referendum has been dominated by the 'Yes' campaign. But despite gaining twice the exposure of the 'No' camp, experts say the Voice supporters seem to have failed to win over large numbers of voters.

Transcript

00:00 No matter where you get your information, there's no escaping the voice referendum campaign.

00:07 A lot of it's yes. From what I've been seeing, it's been yes.

00:11 I see it a lot on the news but it's never on my social media pages at all.

00:14 Seen a lot of yes campaigns.

00:16 An extensive analysis of mainstream and social media has now shown the yes campaign has dominated,

00:23 occupying around 40% of the coverage, compared to less than 20% for no.

00:28 The lion's share of the debate has actually been with the yes campaigns.

00:34 Researchers put half a million mainstream and social media items through a computer

00:38 algorithm to assess how much of the referendum coverage was positive or negative about the

00:44 proposal.

00:45 Despite the prominence of pro-voice views, the researchers tracking polling found the

00:50 yes campaign failed to sway voters, particularly on social media.

00:55 But here it seems that the negative messaging and the fear that's coming from the no camp

00:59 has really been able to pick up Australians' attention.

01:05 Campaign specialist Tony Barry says the yes 23 campaign has been incredibly well resourced

01:11 but not well targeted or focused in its messaging.

01:14 To have $50-100 million is a huge benefit and they have not used that wisely is the

01:21 truth of it.

01:22 But that doesn't mean the yes campaign is entirely to blame for bad poll numbers.

01:27 There could be many reasons why support for the voice to parliament has slipped.

01:30 We should be careful about putting too much courage on campaigning alone.

01:35 There's a whole myriad of multi-factorial reasons for why no at this point in time is

01:42 about 17% percentage points ahead of yes.

01:46 But one notable feature of this referendum is the intense negativity about the conduct

01:51 of the campaign.

01:52 It's not a debate, it's just a screaming match of political fools.

01:56 A sentiment that probably doesn't help either side.

01:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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