2016-06-27, 04:57 PM
Flonne Wrote:In the same way that the entire election process is an opinion poll. Votes are not legally binding in the US, either. If they wanted to, the delegates could vote for whoever they wanted regardless of the popular vote, of which the results are more of a "strong suggestion" to them than anything. As that second article said, it would be career suicide to go directly against the popular vote, though.
Just FYI, this is not 100% true. Many states require delegates to vote according to their constituents for things like presidential candidates.
I was watching the vote results and Cameron's resignation live. I was really shocked and so were my expat friends living there. The 52/48 margin isn't huge, but iirc there was a 70+% voter turn out which is incredibly impressive for a democracy, sad as that may be. I wouldn't use the popular media terms like "mandate", but there's no threshold on their democracy.
It's going to be very interesting to see what happens in Scotland asks for another referendum and tries to rejoin the EU.
I don't think anyone can really predict all of the consequences of such an unprecedented event.