Are referendums an effective way to assess public opinion?

Referendums are often praised for providing a country’s citizens with an approximation of direct democracy. Whereas elections enable eligible voters to give their mandate to a particular politician or party to act on their behalf, referendums involve the submission of a particular law or public measure to direct popular vote.

The opportunity to become directly involved in the decision-making processes of government at a national level is arguably hugely attractive, particularly for those who feel disenfranchised from the political process, as many do in the present political climate. Indeed, appealing to voter disenfranchisement and promoting an ‘alternative’ to the ‘elite’ and ‘bureaucratic’ political class’ played significant roles in the campaigns of the ‘Leave’ side in the Brexit referendum and has sparked demands for independence from the EU from groups in France, Denmark and Italy, to name a few. However, this can enable the manipulation of voters through misinformation – such as the now-infamous ‘£350 million for our NHS’ red bus of the Brexit referendum.

Campaign or interest groups may also reorient the focus of what may actually be a highly complex public measure or law to a single, percussive and politically charged issue, such as immigration. This can be difficult to challenge when coupled with a campaign strategy that encourages the outright rejection of professional or expert opinion, recasting it as ‘elitist’ or ‘disconnected’. Furthermore, some critics of referendums have argued that the complexity of the particular laws or public measures and magnitude of possible outcomes upon the lives of citizens simply far outstrips the understanding of the average individual, and thus putting such decisions in the hands of the public carries an unacceptable level of risk. However, it cannot be ignored that recent high-profile referendums – such as those around Australian and Irish Marriage Equality and Brexit -  have invigorated public interest in politics and generated energetic conversation within all levels of society at a time of considerable voter disengagement.

Additionally, referendums have historically seen lower voter turnout than other forms of democratic participation, such as general elections. This means that results can actually be based not on the representative view of the public, but on the success of each side in galvanizing supporters and getting them to the polling station. The outcomes of this can be particularly damaging if one side has managed to swing public opinion using skilled manipulation or false information – further diluting the actual popular mandate underpinning decisions that can create significant reverberations for the population. However, this issue can be navigated through the use of thresholds, which some countries (for example, Italy and Slovakia) have recently adopted. These require a minimum voter turnout to validate the results of a referendum, and are one way of ensuring that the results are more robustly representative of the national opinion.