Attitudes to the Nice Treaty as shown in the results of the Irish Times/MRBI poll and at the time of the last referendum are analysed by Richard Sinnott
The story underlying the outcome last June of the Nice Treaty referendum was that 65.7 per cent of the electorate failed to vote, that the No vote declined by a couple of percentage points relative to Amsterdam (down from 21 to 18.5 per cent of the electorate) and that the Yes vote collapsed (down from 34 to 15.8 per cent).
Given the massive abstention, the 18.5 per cent No to 15.8 per cent Yes converted into a referendum outcome of 54 per cent No to 46 per cent Yes.
A survey by Irish Marketing Surveys carried out for the European Commission Representation in Ireland showed that the main source of abstention was lack of understanding of the issues.
In approaching the problems arising from the people's rejection of the Nice Treaty, a government could take only some comfort from the Irish Times/MRBI poll.
The first point to note from the poll is how people recall their own behaviour in the Nice referendum. This recall is not very accurate.
Only 40 per cent of respondents acknowledge having abstained in the Nice referendum, whereas we know from the actual results that 65 per cent of the electorate abstained. Adding the 8 per cent Don't Knows to the retrospective estimate of abstention still leaves a 17 percentage point discrepancy.
Some of this is genuinely muddled memory. These are the people who intended to vote and who cannot remember that they didn't. Another slice of the discrepancy is due to people not being willing to admit that they didn't do what some might see as their civic duty.
The second inaccuracy in the recall evidence is that it shows Yes voters outnumbering No voters by a significant margin (see chart).
The interesting point is not what it tells us about inaccurate recall after a lapse of more than half a year (we know that inaccuracy in this regard is a common occurrence). The interesting implication relates to the underlying balance of opinion in the electorate.
It would be quite natural for those who mistakenly think they had voted last June to reconstruct their "behaviour" in accordance with their underlying preference.
Accordingly, the fact that the recall evidence now favours the Yes side confirms other evidence that there are more potential Yes voters out there than potential No voters and that abstention in June 2001 came disproportionately from the Yes side.
It also helps to clarify some evidence in the earlier ECR survey. It attempted to ascertain how those who abstained would have voted if they had turned out. This attempt was only partially successful - 21 per cent said they would have voted No, 10 per cent would have voted Yes, leaving the majority (69 per cent) still uncommitted.
The recall results in the present survey suggest that this majority included a disproportionate share of potential Yes voters.
The Irish Times/MRBI poll shows that attitudes in this area are volatile and that the volatility lies mainly in the Yes and Don't know zones. Support for the view that "Ireland should do all it can to protect its independence from the EU" is fairly stable, at about one-third of the electorate, rising to two-fifths (and overtaking pro-integration support) during the Nice referendum campaign last year.
In contrast, support for the view "Ireland should unite fully with the European Union" has gone from a high of 55 per cent in 1996 all the way down to 25 per cent in the post-Nice ECR survey in 2001 and back up to 51 per cent in this Irish Times/MRBI poll.
Note that the level of No opinion/Don't know has been highest immediately after the Amsterdam and Nice referendums, especially the latter, and that it was when non-committal responses went to 40 per cent that support for a fully integrationist policy plummeted to 25 per cent.
Now, with the referendum receding into the background, levels of uncertainty have fallen dramatically and pro-integration support is back up almost to the 1996 level.
The fundamental lesson here is that a majority of the electorate is inclined to support continuing European integration but that this attitude is not grounded in a thorough understanding of the issues. As a result, it is fragile and easily undermined by the confusion that can arise from all of the competing claims and counter-claims made during a referendum campaign.
As for voting intentions in the hypothetical situation of a second referendum on Nice being held in the morning, 40 per cent say they would vote Yes, 29 per cent would vote No, 9 per cent (only) say they would not vote and 21 per cent are undecided. Intention to vote Yes is significantly lower among farmers, people living in rural areas, people under 35 and women.
The health warning on these figures can hardly be overstated.
The last campaign turned rather similar figures into a 54 to 46 vote against (mainly, it has to be said, by inducing massive abstention). All will therefore depend on the old and new arguments that each side can put before the electorate.
Having to hold referendums on such complex issues poses a substantial challenge. However, it is also generally acknowledged that in recent referendums, the process itself has been unsatisfactory. The change in the role of the Referendum Commission may help to improve things but this will only happen if politicians and activists on all sides throw themselves into a vigorous and forthright debate.
Prof Richard Sinnott is director of the Public Opinion and Political Behaviour Research Programme at the Institute for the Study of Social Change in UCD