Why are referendums ending up so different from how polls suggest?

From Brexit to the FARC peace deal, there have been some shockers in referendums: the polls have very much gone one way, and the results another.

So what the heck is going on? In this episode, Xander and Erik talk about how polling works, how it might be going so wrong, and what oddities are going on with direct democracy versus the representative stuff we're used to.

Sources

• "On Colombia Peace Vote, Pollsters Miss Again," Wall Street Journal
• "FARC Peace Talks and Drug Trafficking: Uribe's Nuclear Option," Insight Crime
• "What Now?" The Economist
• "Saving Columbia's Peace," The Economist
• "Wrong Again: Poll-Driven Wisdom Failed in Columbia," Bloomberg Politics
• The “spiral of silence”: how pollsters got the Colombia-FARC peace deal vote so wrong," Vox
• Spiral of Silence
• "Colombia's Brexit Vote," Lawfare Blog
• The Shy Tory
• The California Voter Ordeal: 17 Decisions on the Ballot," New York Times
• "Donald Trump Threatens to Lock Hillary Up," The Economist

ReConsider, by Xander Snyder and Erik Fogg, is a twice-per-month podcast in which we take on, in-depth, one pressing political issue facing western democracies with a fresh, researched, and challenging perspective. We help listeners see the full context behind the issue and make up their own minds.

ReConsider Media is a syndicate of IVN.us. This podcast was originally published on ReConsider Media on October 19, 2016.