The people of the ACT will vote Yes for a republic and Saturday’s referendum and No to a preamble, according to the latest Canberra Times Datacol opinion poll.
The poll shows a 53 per cent Yes vote in the ACT for the republic proposal, 38 per cent against with 9 per cent undecided.
Support for the republic was higher among men, among the 35 to 55-year-olds, and Labor voters.
Attitudes in the ACT are widely thought to be more republican and more in favour of voting Yes in referendums than in the rest of the nation.
But referendum voting shows the ACT voting pattern to be not widely different from the national average. The ACT was given the right to vote in referendums in 1977 and has voted on six referendums questions since. On average the Yes vote was 38.5 per cent nationally and just 2.2 points higher in the ACT at 40.7.
Only 30 per cent will vote Yes for the preamble with 45 per cent against and 25 per cent undecided.
However, the poll was taken before the authors of the preamble, Prime Minister John Howard and Democrats Aboriginal Senator Aden Ridgeway began their campaign to publicise the issue more.
Datacol principal Malcolm Mearns said it was too hard to tell which way the undecideds were tending from correlations with other questions.
In addition to asking the specific referendum questions, the poll asked some general questions on issues related to the republic.
To a question whether Australian should become a republic some in the next 10 years, 73 per cent said Yes, 14 per cent said No, 12 per cent neutral and 1 per cent undecided.
The number in favour of a republic has gone up 5 percentage points (Subs not 5 per cent, but 5 percentage points. There is a BIG difference) since the last poll in February 1998, whereas support for an indirectly elected president went down 17 percentage points in the same time.
The poll asked eight other questions, asking respondents to score their agreement with each statement on a scale of 1 to 10. The scores were then averaged.
In general people are in favour of replacing the Queen and Governor General with a president; having a President with powers like those of the Governor-General and directly electing the President.
They are against a President with powers like the US President or running the country day to day and they are against having the president selected by the Prime Minister or elected by Parliament.
The opinion is consistent with a nationwide desire to directly elect the president, with the added dimension that people want to directly elect even if the President is to be purely ceremonial.
This poll indicates that people want a direct election for a ceremonial president, but will (perhaps begrudgingly) accept the indirect election on offer in order to get a republic.