Non-voting in the 2018 Romanian referendum: the importance of initiators, campaigning and issue saliency

Abstract

The requirement of a participation quorum for validity makes non-voting in referendums an important type of voting behaviour. This article seeks to explain non-voting in a referendum where the expectation was to have high turnout but where in reality only few voted, i.e. the 2018 referendum on the topic of same-sex marriage in Romania. Our explanations are inspired by the literature on turnout on elections to which we add several specific features of referendums. We propose three major sets of factors derived from the literature: access to resources, strategic decisions and campaign issues. The analysis relies on 36 semistructured interviews with individuals aged 18 and above conducted in several urban and rural localities throughout Romania between December 2018 and March 2019.