Quote:
Originally Posted by Angua
I see nothing decisive about any vote or referendum in decades. Unless 50.01% of the electorate vote for a particular something, there is no significant support. I do not mean 50.01% of those who voted.
|
An abstention is an abstention - it is a decision not to voice an opinion, for whatever reason, for or against. It isn’t uncommon to hear those who are on the losing side in a vote try to co-opt the abstainers to their side of the argument, on the basis that those people didn’t support whatever was proposed, but that really won’t do. An abstention is an abstention and that’s it. You can’t use it to infer anything, with the single exception of votes where a quorum is required, in which case the rules do effectively make an abstention into a vote for the status quo.
We do not use quorums in British public voting, with one exception, that being the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, where one was set, and devolution did not happen, despite there being a yes vote, because the quorum was not met. The result was a running sore in Scottish politics that wasn’t truly healed until Labour re-ran the referendum at its first available opportunity, in 1998.