One result stood out when the Voice referendum ballots were counted last night.
Canberrans voted at odds with the rest of the country. Again.
The ACT was the only Australian jurisdiction to endorse the Voice: its Yes vote was 60.8 per cent (as of last night).
Nonetheless, as a mere territory, the ACT lacks the clout of a state in referendums. Its influence was negligible.
Canberrans' approval of the Voice now joins a list of other moments that seem to set the capital apart.
The ACT was the sole jurisdiction to endorse an Australian republic at the previous referendum in 1999 (63 per cent of Canberrans voted Yes, compared with 45 per cent nationally).
The capital's support for changing marriage laws in 2017 was much stronger than in any state (74 per cent, versus 62 per cent nationally).
Indeed, the ACT government tried to legislate same-sex marriages (or "civil unions", as it called them) more than a decade before the Commonwealth did — but federal parliament quickly put an end to that effort.
Pushing boundaries of social norms
Over the years, Canberra has often been described, usually disapprovingly, as a social experiment.
In two weeks' time, the ACT will become Australia's first jurisdiction to decriminalise small amounts of illicit drugs — such as ecstasy, cocaine and ice. It has already decriminalised cannabis.
Along with the Northern Territory, the ACT tried to legalise voluntary euthanasia last century (the Commonwealth intervened then, too).
It may be tempting to ascribe exceptionalism to Canberrans; to see them as uniquely different to other Australians, for better or for worse.
Yet last night's Voice results — and the marriage survey results in 2017, too — show the opposite.
Canberrans, along with the rest of the country, voted almost exactly as expected, and as polling suggested they would.
Age and education divide Australians' views
Australian referendums are inherently focused on geography: success requires a majority vote in a majority of states.
Yet throughout the Voice campaign, pollsters suggested the deeper divides were less about where we lived than other factors.
Counting is not yet complete, but the preliminary results show age and education are powerfully associated with how Australians voted.
In fact, these two measures explain more than 80 per cent of the differences between the electorates' results.
As this chart shows, it's easy to guess how an area voted just by knowing how many voters aged under 50 live there, and how many have a university qualification.
Seen this way, the ACT isn't particularly special.
It's just that Canberra happens to be a city where many jobs require higher education. It also has far fewer older residents than other cities.
This analysis of what happened is limited: electorates are large, and other important factors affecting people's vote on the Voice may be hidden.
But it's very clear that younger populations are strongly associated with support for the Voice, as are communities where many people went to university.
The ACT's chief minister, Andrew Barr, reflected on the nature of Canberrans last night as he watched the referendum results unfold.
He suggested there was, perhaps, something exceptional about people in the capital.
He had "a sense of pride in this community", he said, which was "once again showing that Canberra is the progressive heart of the nation".
"It reflects on the values of our community and the fact that Canberrans took the time to engage with the issues," Mr Barr said.
"If they didn't know, they tried to find out — which I think stands us apart from other parts of the country."