After morning drizzle, InDaily visited a polling station in the CBD and spoke to voters in the first referendum held in Australia for 24 years.

The first, a visitor to Adelaide from Melbourne – Madeline – said the referendum campaign had been “rubbish”.

“We’re all Australians,” she said.

“We’ve all been through tough times. Yes, the Aboriginals were here first, then English and French and all those ones came in and then we’ve had the Italians and the Greeks and Muslims – everybody’s Australian right?”

She said she hoped the No vote would win, but she also wasn’t sure.

“It’s been pushed a lot for Yes, and people change their mind over time, but I’m hoping for No.”

Her hopes were realised as a progressive vote count on Saturday showed the No vote in the referendum was ahead 56 per cent to 44 per cent, with more than two million votes tallied.

More importantly, the required four states had all voted No to giving Aboriginal and Torres State Islanders a voice in Parliament as the tally continued in Western Australia.

South Australia, widely considered a swing state until today’s polling, overwhelmingly voted No – 61.4 per cent to 38.6 per cent – with only Queensland tallying a higher No vote in counting early on Saturday.

South Australian Opposition leader David Spiers used the scale of the defeat to call for the Prime Minister to resign, as reported by the international BBC.

“I think the damage he has done to our country and the very fabric of what it means to be Australian is quite frankly heartbreaking,” he said.

“It’ll be up to the Prime Minister and the federal Labor party tomorrow to make a call on what he does now – but I think he should resign.”

John, an 80-year-old voter in Adelaide who voted Yes, said the real damage that had been done to Aboriginal people should be acknowledged.

“The Indigenous people should have a voice in Parliament – it seems like the least we can do. We’ve done a lot of damage, haven’t we,” he said.

“We’re in such a mess as humans – it’s all going down the tubes to be quite frank.”

The democracy sausage was the only normal thing about voting today in the first referendum in 24 years. Photo: Tony Lewis

The ACT has been the only jurisdiction to support the reform, but its tally only goes towards the national vote and not the state-by-state total.

Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo said the results signalled a “sorry day”.

“It’ll expose just a whole different style of political campaign in this country.”

No campaigner Warren Mundine said advocates against the proposal had engaged with the community.

“I knew that we could win every state and that we could have a chance to get the majority vote,” he told ABC.

“The reality is that we went and spoke to the people out there.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who pledged the constitutional change in his 2022 post-election speech, said he had done everything possible to ensure a successful referendum.

He said the No campaign had “spoken about division while stoking it”.

The Prime Minister is set to address the nation, once the final results are known.

About 6.1 million Australians voted early and 2.1 million eligible voters applied for a postal ballot, with about 9.2 million Australians casting their vote on Saturday.

Finally, InDaily spoke with Zara who lives in Adelaide. She said “the campaign has really shown the level of casual racism that exists in Australia”.

“People seem to think Australia isn’t that racist but when you aren’t the demographic experiencing it you’re obviously not going to realise that it exists in everyday life,” she said.

“I honestly don’t know who will win, but I’d like to hope that Australians have enough empathy to vote yes for an initiative that doesn’t hurt anyone and only serves to better outcomes for Indigenous communities.”

But South Australian Coalition senator Kerrynne Liddle said the No vote she campaigned for didn’t mean Australians were against Indigenous people.

“People didn’t say ‘no’ to reconciliation, they did not say ‘no’ to improving the lives of Indigenous Australians.”

More to come