Does the normal voter actually understand the realities of politics?

Ask the electorate whether it understands politics and it will, apparently, mark its own homework harshly: this vote closed 75 to 22 against, a rout dressed up as self-assessment. There was no constituency of self-belief to rally around, only degrees of scepticism.

That scepticism deepened steadily through the decades. The youngest voters were split evenly down the middle, willing at least to entertain the idea, but from the mid-20s onward the mood curdled fast, and the 55-64s — the group that has lived through the most governments, budgets and referendums — were the most damning of all, all but unanimous in their doubt. Women were somewhat more generous than men, though still firmly in the "no" camp rather than genuinely divided.

It is a striking inversion of the populist instinct that usually flatters the ordinary voter's judgement against distant elites: here the platform's own users, presumably more engaged than most, chose to indict the very faculty — political understanding — that democratic legitimacy depends on. It echoes a familiar anxiety since 2016, about low-information voting, media narratives and the gap between headline and hinterland.

A public that doubts its own understanding of politics has, at least, understood something.