A ReachTEL poll conducted this week by The West Australian newspaper has shown that Western Australians are overwhelming in favour of marriage equality and they’ve been quick to fill out their survey forms and return them to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The poll, that gauged the thoughts of 1,723 people found that 63% we supportive of same-sex marriage, while 37% we opposed.
Of the people surveyed, 90 per cent said they had already returned their survey form, or planned to return it the moment it arrived.
Supporters of The Greens were most in favour of changing the marriage laws with 93.8 per cent voicing support for change. Seventy-seven per cent of Labor voters were supportive, and 50.3 per cent of Liberal voters.
As in other surveys on the issue, women are more supportive than men, with 71.4 per cent of women surveyed giving support. Only 54.6 of men support changing the laws.
The encouraging poll result comes as the YES campaign looks back over a week filled with negative stories about the push for marriage equality.
A Canberra business announced it would no longer be engaging the services of a contractor who was a supporter of marriage equality, the incident lead to the NO campaign claiming that concerns that people would be “bullied out of their jobs” were legitimate.
The AFL faced a public back lash, and the wrath of TV host Sam Newman, after they changed their logo on the front of their Melbourne HQ. For 24 hours the logo said ‘Yes’ rather than ‘AFL’. The building had to be evacuated the following day, due to a bomb hoax.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, one of the leading voices in the No campaign was allegedly assaulted by a man wearing a ‘Yes’ campaign sticker on his jacket.
The Tasmanian man was later charged by police and told the media that his actions were in no way related to the YES campaign for marriage equality, but by the time the news was revealed prominent opponents to the YES campaign had spent 24 hours blaming marriage equality supporters for the incident.
The national survey on marriage equality is open until 6pm on Tuesday 7 November. The Australian Bureau of Statistics will publish the results on Tuesday 15 November.
OIP Staff
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