ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the existing studies of referendum campaigns to understand when a referendum campaign would be expected to make a difference to the referendum outcome. It presents the literature on political campaigns in order to shed light on how people decide in referendums, how they process campaign information, and in turn, which kinds of political arguments can be expected to affect the vote choice. The chapter utilizes the referendums on the European Union (EU) as a case study to demonstrate when and how referendum campaigns can be decisive in referendum decision making. Voting behaviour in referendums has been studied extensively in a comparative framework. By nature, voting in a referendum is very different from voting in an election. L. LeDuc suggests that in referendum campaigns voting behaviour could exhibit greater volatility than regular elections. Accordingly, LeDuc specifies three types of referendum campaigns: opinion formation, opinion reversal, and uphill struggle.
