To stay, remain or leave: how verbal concepts as response options in political referendums such as the Brexit polls might bias voting outcomes

Abstract

Referendums allow people to participate in political decision-making. However, they also come with the challenge of presenting complex issues to the electorate in a concise and comprehensible way. In order to simplify the decision-making process, referendum questions are often tailored to yes/no response options. In comparison, the UK European Union membership referendum of 2016, in contrast to the 1975 referendum on the same issue, discarded this option, and a verbal and conceptually more complex alternative response option was brought into play (remain vs. leave). This potentially relevant change in the voting tradition justifies a linguistic consideration of the suitability of the choice of verbs. Verbal response options such as stay, remain and leave might activate different framing effects due to their underlying etymology. Our goal was therefore to examine whether the choice of verbs can have a biasing effect, which might be the case due to their frame-inherent structure. This investigation attempts, through both a linguistic analysis and an experimental analysis using a version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), to bridge the research gap between the awareness that there are linguistic factors that can influence decision-making processes and the lack of inclusion of framing effects. Overall, the data of two IAT studies (n = 185 and n = 355) suggest that the exact wording of dichotomic response options has the potential to influence response choice based on evaluative associations of the verbs. Specifically, when compared to leave, we found relatively more positive evaluation for stay than for remain. Furthermore - independent of the Brexit referendum - our study raises the question whether verbs are at all suitable to replace yes/no response options due to inherent framing effects. This linguistic aspect requires more attention in the design of response options in future referendums.