With only a few days to go to the Lisbon referendum, recent opinion polls indicate very clearly that the campaign to get the proposition passed is under very serious threat of failure. Opinion polls this close to voting usually indicate the trend that will emerge on polling day. So at this stage the Lisbon Treaty looks very likely to be rejected.
So what has happened to generate what appears to be major resistance among the electorate to agreeing to the reform proposed?
The poll results are perhaps not that surprising when the crisis of credibility around this Referendum is taken into account. The ‘Yes’ campaign has failed to convince us of the rationale for this position - in fact, it could be said that no deliberate effort to communicate any particular message to substantiate a yes vote appears to have been forwarded to-date - the essential message from the Yes side is – vote for this because we say it’s a good idea.
In other words, trust us, we’re politicians.
The No’ campaign, while more successful in communicating its message, has largely been driven from outside the traditional party political process with some question marks being raised over who is being represented and by whom.
In communications terms, credibility is widely accepted as an essential ingredient for success and audiences need to be able to trust both messenger and message to feel that they can make informed decisions. From the Irish Times/TNS poll: “The reason most often cited by No voters is that they don’t know what they are voting for or they don’t understand the treaty - with 30 per cent of No voters listing this as the main reason for their decision.”
In this Referendum, both camps appear to be struggling with the credibility test, but for different reasons. It will be interesting to see which aspect - trusting the messenger or trusting the message, has the greater impact when the results are known next week.