If so many people in Britain (80% was the usual figure quoted) wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, how come only 43% bothered voting?

If the anti-EU cause is so overwhelmingly popular, how come only around half of those voted for an anti-EU party? (And that’s only if you include the Tories as anti-EU.)

Let’s number-crunch: 28.6% Tory, 17.4% UKIP, 6.5% BNP, Socialist Labour c.1%, English Democrats c.2%, Jury Team/No2EU/Libertas all <1% – so that’s c.55.5% of the vote for anti-Lisbon parties, and only around 27% of the vote for explicitly anti-EU parties (the Tories are more hard eurosceptics than overtly withdrawalist, after all).

I make that, with a 43% turnout, just 24% of the electorate supporting an anti-Lisbon party, and just 11.6% of the electorate supporting a party that advocates pulling out of the EU.

Update: Sorry – forgot that the Greens are anti-Lisbon. So that’s another 5.8%, so 61.3% total for anti-Lisbon parties, or 26.4% of the electorate. But still only 11.6% in favour of withdrawal.