Research on voting suggests that a stable democratic system requires those who back electoral losers to generate positive attitudes to electoral outcomes. Electoral systems can be more or less helpful in the way they encourage losers'' consent, with proportional systems generally deemed to be more successful. We know far less, however, of the way that voter experiences of referendums might affect the generation of losers'' consent. Referendums, particularly on emotive subjects such as independence or self-determination, offer binary options to voters that might seem to raise the prospects of perceived risk and uncertainty, inhibiting losers'' consent. This paper draws on research from behavioural economics to create a model of losers'' consent in the context of direct democracy, emphasizing the importance of deliberation and campaigns as ''markets'' of information. It then draws on data from referendums in the UK, Canada and Australia to identify variables that facilitate or inhibit losers'' consent. The findings emphasize the importance of campaigns over the wider political context in which referendums occur.
