No, as it shown on your circuits there is about 5V at voltage divider outputs, and ref. voltage can't be lower than that.
I am likely going to use the differential method, but for curiosity sake:
If I set voltage ref to 1.1 and setup resistors in such a way to give me 1.1V out when I had 14.7V at the top; would that give better resolution or worse or the same as compared to just leaving the voltage dividers as they are now and voltage ref at 5V?