The Numbers Moved the Wrong Way: Why the Republic Is Further Away Than It Was in 1999

by | Sep 2, 2026 | Parliamentary Republicanism

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There is a comfortable assumption in Australian republican circles that the republic is inevitable — that it's a generational question, that the monarchy's support is old and dying, and that the only real variable is timing. The polling does not support that assumption. On most measures, support for an Australian republic is lower now than it was at the referendum Australia lost in 1999, and it fell further after the death of Queen Elizabeth II rather than rising. Anyone arguing for a republic tonight should be arguing against that trend, not around it.

What the polling actually shows

The numbers vary by pollster and by question wording, which matters enormously on this topic — but the direction is consistent.

Roy Morgan has asked a version of the same binary question for over a decade: should Australia remain a monarchy, or become a republic with an elected President? In November 2012, the split was 55% monarchy to 45% republic. In September 2022, in the days after Elizabeth's death and Charles's accession, it moved to the monarchy: 60% to 40%. In October 2024, after Charles and Camilla's first visit as reigning monarchs, it had eased slightly to 57% monarchy, 43% republic — still worse for republicans than 2012, and worse than the 45.13% Yes vote actually achieved in 1999.

YouGov's polling around the referendum's 25th anniversary found a similar picture with a more revealing structure. Between September 2023 and October 2024, support for remaining a constitutional monarchy after the King's passing rose from 35% to 43%, while the proportion wanting a transition to a republic as soon as possible fell from 32% to 23%. The same research found Australians view the royals considerably more positively than they view their own politicians — which is not an incidental finding, given that every serious republican model involves politicians selecting or nominating the head of state.

A News Corp online survey in October 2024 put support for a republic at roughly one in three. That's a self-selecting online poll rather than a representative sample and should be weighted accordingly, but it was consistent with the direction of the better-designed polls.

The Australian Monarchist League cited a Daily Telegraph poll finding 45% opposed to a republic against 33% in favour. Again: partisan source, commercial poll, treat with caution. But no serious polling in the last several years has shown majority support for a republic.

The Queen's death didn't help — it hurt

Republicans spent two decades saying the question should wait until after Elizabeth II's reign, on the reasoning that personal affection for her was propping up an institution most Australians didn't otherwise care about. Malcolm Turnbull said exactly this. Julia Gillard's government took the same position.

That theory has now been tested, and it appears to have been wrong. Roy Morgan's post-accession poll in September 2022 recorded the highest monarchist support in a decade, driven substantially by a shift among Labor voters: in 2012, 40% of ALP voters supported retaining the monarchy; by September 2022, 58% did. Coalition voters remained strongly monarchist. Only Greens voters were majority-republican.

The most plausible reading is that the "wait for the Queen" thesis mistook a moment of national grief for a change of heart, and that the mourning period generated a wave of sympathy for the institution rather than the opening republicans expected. A separate Guardian Australia poll around the same time showed a 50-50 split, so the picture wasn't uniform — but nothing in it suggested an imminent republican surge.

The ARM's response to the 2024 royal visit was to run a campaign branding it a "farewell tour," which drew a sharp reaction from monarchists who pointed out that Charles was undertaking an arduous tour while being treated for cancer. Whether or not you think that criticism is fair, the episode illustrates a strategic difficulty: campaigning against a specific monarch tends to make the argument about that person rather than about the institution, and personal sympathy runs in the monarchy's favour more often than not.

The Voice referendum changed the political calculus

The second reason the republic has receded is the 2023 Voice referendum, which failed with roughly 60% voting No and did not carry a single state — the ACT was again the only jurisdiction to vote Yes, precisely as in 1999.

Anthony Albanese is a longstanding, committed republican. He appointed Australia's first Assistant Minister for the Republic, Matt Thistlethwaite, in 2022. But he has since said plainly that he won't pursue the change: he has always supported an Australian head of state, but the existing arrangements are in place, and he has made clear that he wanted to hold one referendum as Prime Minister and did so. The Assistant Minister for the Republic portfolio was not retained in the 2024 cabinet reshuffle — the clearest institutional signal available that the issue has been shelved.

The political analysis around this is fairly consistent. Political scientist Paul Williams has described the Voice referendum as having taken significant personal toll on Albanese. Political strategist Bruce Hawker has argued that once bipartisan support for a referendum evaporates, public support becomes almost impossible to guarantee — a lesson drawn from the Voice but applying with equal force to the republic. A Prime Minister with a large majority and renewed political capital appears unwilling to spend it on a second referendum defeat.

There is also a harder structural lesson. Referendum failures make subsequent referendums harder, not easier. Michael Kirby has made this point: the double-majority requirement in section 128 becomes more difficult to satisfy once voters have been shown that rejecting constitutional change is normal and consequence-free. Australia has now had two referendum defeats in 24 years, both losing every state, both splitting inner-metropolitan Australia from everywhere else. That is not a foundation for a third attempt.

What the republican movement is doing about it

The Australian Republic Movement remains active, with branches, a Women's Network, a youth program launched for 2026, and stated ambitions to take a "People's Model" to Parliament and then to voters. Its own materials note that 42 of the 56 Commonwealth nations are already republics, with only 14 retaining Charles III as head of state — an argument that Australia is the outlier rather than the innovator. (That figure is the ARM's own; it's worth verifying independently before quoting it at a panel.)

The organisation has also had a rough few years institutionally. Co-chairs Craig Foster and Nova Peris both resigned in 2024, after roughly fourteen months, over conflicting views on the war in Gaza — a reminder that a broad-tent constitutional campaign is vulnerable to being pulled apart by unrelated political fault lines. Esther Anatolitis has since served as co-chair, with Isaac Jeffrey as CEO and National Director.

The strongest counter-argument

None of the above establishes that the republic is dead, and there are honest responses to it.

First, question wording drives the result. The Roy Morgan question offers "a republic with an elected President," which is a specific model, not the principle. Polls testing the abstract proposition — should Australia's head of state be an Australian? — have historically produced much higher support, and the auspublaw commentary in February 2022 cited majority support at around 54%. If republicans are right that Australians support the principle and balk at models, the polling on models is measuring the known problem rather than a collapse in underlying sentiment.

Second, the current numbers reflect a period with no campaign. Referendum polling routinely moves a long way once an actual campaign starts — usually against the proposal, admittedly, but the pre-campaign baseline is a weak predictor.

Third, this is a genuinely long-horizon question. The 1999 result did not stop the debate, and the fact that support is currently low says little about where it sits in twenty years.

The question worth sitting with

If the assumption that time is on the republic's side turns out to be wrong — if support has been falling rather than accumulating, and each failed referendum makes the next one harder — then the republican movement faces a choice it has mostly avoided making. Does it wait for a more favourable moment that may never arrive, or does it accept that any winning model requires compromises that a large part of its own base considers unacceptable? Waiting has been the strategy since 1999. It is worth asking honestly what, specifically, republicans are now waiting for.

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