QotD: The French Referendum

Tonight's referendum rejection of the European constitution by French voters is surprisingly strong for three reasons: the brute score for the No, 55%, is unusually high (it was a hair over 50% for the Yes in the 1992 Maastricht referendum); the last-minute polls which suggested the No camp's momentum was fading turned out to be inaccurate; and perhaps most important, the robust 70% participation rate makes the final result impossible to discount. France thought hard about this question and came out in great numbers to make a clear decision.

Because Belinda Stronach was not involved, expect most Canadian news organizations to ignore this news more or less completely.

Paul Wells, "Sens et non-sens d'un vote", Inkless Wells, 2005-05-29