Honeymoons, Economics and Figureheads: a General Theory of EU Referendums

When are referendums on European integration and EU membership lost or won? Unlike studies of election outcomes, students of referendums have hitherto failed to develop models with the same predictive power as Vote-Popularity (VP) Functions. Based on all the 40 referendums held to date the article develops a VP-function for referendums. Combining Framing Theory and VP-Functions, the article suggests that the referendum on the EU are lost if the government has been in power for a long time and that positive macroeconomic developments are correlated with a vote against integration and that the no-camp tend to need a figurehead to win the referendum. Consistent with the methodological rules espoused by Imre Lakatos, the model presents an advancement in the research as it is able to explain what previous models could explain as well as the anomalies unexplained by earlier models.