News the favoured source of Voice information: ACM survey

In a survey of 10,131 people, conducted by the publisher of this masthead, 38 per cent of respondents said they would vote "yes" for the Voice to Parliament, while 55 per cent would vote "no", leaving 7 per cent undecided.

The results come ahead of a referendum expected to be held between October and December, which will ask citizens whether they want to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

The Voice would be an independent advisory body to Parliament on matters affecting the lives of First Nations peoples.

The survey used a dual sample collection approach, and reweighted the sample against 2022 census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In it, 72 per cent of respondents also said the government had not done enough to explain the Voice to the community.

Asked about their primary source of information on the proposed referendum, respondents ranked news above government websites, with 27 per cent saying they mainly relied on news websites, followed by television (18 per cent) and newspapers (14 per cent).

Social media was the main source of information for 11 per cent of respondents, while 7 per cent said they primarily relied on government websites.

Smaller numbers of respondents identified radio, government advertising, family and friends and other advertising as their main sources of information.

But 8 per cent said they relied on "other" sources, citing websites, the Prime Minister, life experience and their work.

The poll also found those in metropolitan areas (including Canberra) were more likely to source their information on the Voice from news websites than those in the regions (33 per cent compared with 25 per cent).

Meanwhile regional respondents were more reliant on television than those in metropolitan areas (20 per cent compared with 11 per cent) and social media (12 per cent compared with 9 per cent).

Those polled in metropolitan areas were slightly more likely, at 8 per cent, to rely primarily on government websites, than regional respondents, 6 per cent of whom selected government websites.

Respondents aged 40-59 were more likely than all other groups to find their information on news websites. All age groups selected news websites as their main source of information, with the exception of those aged 75+, who relied primarily on newspapers.

The youngest group (18-39) was more likely to get their Voice information from social media first (18 per cent) and government websites (9 per cent), than any other age group.

Both men and women ranked news websites, followed by television as their main source of information on the Voice. But a greater proportion of men than women favoured news websites, television and newspapers, while more women than men relied on social media and government websites.