The influence of turnout on the results of the referendum to amend the constitution to include a clause on the rights of the unborn - reply

Abstract

O'Donnell and Brannick (ODB ) believe that it is invalid to attempt to assign a preference to those who did not vote in the Referendum. They claim that those who abstain in a Referendum are expressing a strongly felt view `on a par with voting 'yes' or 'no'. They believe that this is `doubly true ` of the 1983 Referendum because of `the complicated interaction of... issues involved?. I accept that many of those who abstained may have done so explicitly in the belief that not voting was a more meaningful response to the Referendum than voting either `yes? or `no? . Nonetheless, I believe it is valid to speculate about how a higher turnout would have affected the distribution of the votes cast. Speculation of this nature is commonplace after polls in Ireland. People do not find it unreasonable or meaningless to ask, for example, what would have happened if better weather had led to a heavier poll. Attempts are made to answer this type of question by looking at the composition of the abstainers and other clues as to how they might have voted. I have no doubt that the OD B view of the `conscientious abstainer? is a valid description of the behaviour of some non-voters, but I do not accept that it applies so generally, even in the case of the Referendum in question, as to render meaningless the attempt to answer the question posed in my Note.