The Electoral Reform Society has released a report about the EU referendum (HERE) setting out what it calls the "glaring democratic deficiencies" with voters turned off by big name politicians and negative campaigning, a report says. The ERS attacked both sides of the referendum campaign, saying people felt "ill-informed" by the "dire" debate.
I agree with this but personally I think the remain arguments are mostly unproven but the leave campaign admitted most of their claims were misleading the day after the vote!
Coincidentally, and on a separate topic (Trump in the USA) the Washington Post has an article (HERE) about the part played in a democracy by emotion over reason when it comes to voting. The author talks about the "indifference to truth and consistency is what happens when the honest efforts of political scientists to grapple with the balance between the rational and irrational in politics become an excuse for absolute cynicism — about voters, their attention spans and democracy itself".
He also mentions the attention span of today's electorate and I have often talked myself about people's need for simple answers to complex questions.
Yesterday the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report on why voters made the choice they did and it's quite revealing (HERE). A graph shows 27% support for Brexit from people with a post graduate degree against 75% from those with no qualifications. As I said to someone in the week after the vote at least we know pretty accurately how many stupid people there are in the UK - the JRF seems to confirm this view.
No comments:
Post a Comment