Recent Polling On The Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey

The national ABS postal "survey" on whether the law should be changed to allow same-sex marriage in Australia is now in its second week.  A number of pieces of polling have been published or alluded to since my last general polling update, but what do they really tell us about the outcome and how reliable are they?  At this stage there is still much that we do not know.  It is too early to be certain Yes has it in the bag, but the widespread narrative that support for Yes is crashing rapidly and that this is another Trump or Brexit coming is so far not that well supported by the evidence.

Public Polling: Ipsos

Firstly, the public polling.  Last week saw an Ipsos poll which buoyed some worried Yes supporters with a 70-26 Yes response, one of the highest Yes votes ever recorded in a poll in Australia.  Indeed, as far as I'm aware, this score has only been exceeded in a few commissioned polls and one Morgan-SMS (a suspect polling method) which did not use an undecided option.  The Ipsos also found a 70% Yes response among the 65% of voters who rated themselves as certain to vote, and found a gender gap with 72% of women and 59% of men saying they were certain to vote.