On Sunday, Slovenians rejected the law on assisted dying. When the referendum dust settled, the NO campaign of Aleš Primc and a host of other organisations pulled in a respectable 54 % of the vote amid a near-historic 41% turnout. This means they easily cleared both hurdles needed for rejection of the law. They won a majority which also represented more than 20% of all eligible voters.
To say that the result came as a shock to many in the YES camp would be an understatement. Going into the final days of the campaign, proponents of the law were oozing optimism backed by some very favourable polling. But then the numbers started rolling in. Pengovsky didn’t share this optimism to begin with, so here are ten takeaways from the Sunday whoopass.
While you’re here and since the format of this blog requires an extra paragraph under the fold, but before the first heading, pengovsky wants to say a big thank you to everyone who support this blog or have done so in the past. As both readers know, he writes this drivel for free, and greatly appreciates any support you can give.
1. Rethink the turnout fundamentals
In the olden times, the math was simple. Lower turnout favoured the right wing and their disciplined voters. Higher turnout meant the unruly left-wing voters were animated enough to get off of their asses and vote.
If it was ever true (and maybe someone should take another look at the numbers), it no longer is. The referendum turnout two days ago was humongous by Muddy Hollows referendum standards. It basically equaled the turnout at the consultative referendum in June 2024, even though that one came with the EU vote attached to it.
Looking back, the old logic didn’t add up then, either. The higher-than-usual turnout was thought to favour the left-liberal coalition. And while assisted dying won the majority in the consultative vote, it was the right-wing parties that won the EU vote, which was the real prize at the time.
Point being that old assumptions no longer apply. Auric Goldfinger said that once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, but the third time is enemy action. In other words, while it may be tempting to describe the vote on Sunday as a fluke, there have been too many flukes lately to ignore the pattern.
2. Opinion polls were off by a country mile
In his blogpost late on Friday, pengovsky mentioned that polls may be off, as referendums are notoriously hard to call. It turned out that there was indeed a difference between supporting assisting dying in principle and supporting a specific law which even some supporters conceded was not all that it was cracked up to be.
Given that the pollsters recognised that the yes/no split in this case does not follow the left/right divide, it is possible there were a number of people in both camps who were open to defying the party line. Especially among the yes-in-principle crowd.
Pollsters have tried to explain this away with varying degrees of success. But looking from the outside in, it looks like their modeling needs a serious update.
3. Culture war still reigns supreme
Despite the above, the main feature of the campaign was the culture war waged by Aleš, the Primc of Darkness and his powerful political, civic and religious allies. He spun a highly inflammatory and lying narrative about how the law legalises poisoning old people, calls for culling of the infirm instead of fixing the healthcare system, and promotes a suicide culture.
These, of course, are barely disguised dog whistles that the base understood quite well, thank you very much. In case you’re wondering, these are the variations of Obama Death Panels, the Great Replacement Theory, and Christian supremacy.
But perhaps the most effective tool Primc and his posse employed was conflating assisted dying and euthanasia. The Sunday vote was on the former. But opponents of the law kept talking about the latter, no matter what. And it stuck, even among people who are normally too intelligent for such antics.
4. The (ever so timid) return of the rational voter
Regardless of the raging culture war, a non-insignificant number of people were genuinely wrestling with the referendum question on assisted dying. Did all of them read the actual law? Not necessarily. But they did likely look to doctors (their GPs or otherwise) for, well, a second opinion (pun very much intended).
It just so happened that most doctors had at least some issues with the content of the law, even if they might have seen the good intentions of the legislation. And that’s before we consider the fact that the relations between doctors (and to some extent nurses, as well) and the ruling coalition are somewhere south of the Tito-Stalin relationship circa 1948.
And when the best they got was “it’s a swell idea, but here’s where I see potential pitfalls...” you can bet you bottom euro that some of these people either didn’t vote or might have even voted against the law on merit rather than on the basis of ideology.
Sure, Primc with his rage baiting counted on the fact that as a whole, people can sometimes be profoundly stupid. But even if that was the case, this time around they were not irrational about it.
5. New voting cohorts bring new priorities
One other thing to note is that this year, kids born in 2007 are turning old enough to vote. To put it crudely, as of now, the last third of GenZ cohort is coming of age. Compared to the amorphous average voter, these kids have very different set of political and social priorities.
This includes voting (or not voting) on a question that will be relevant to them in 40-odd years, at best. It will be interesting to see the crosstabs if and when they become available, but anecdotal evidence suggest the Zoomers told the old guard to fuck off, together with the horse they rode in on. Not because they don’t support assisted dying in principle but because the old progressives were expecting the young ones to once more carry water for them, because… reasons?
The point here is not that young voters are detached from politics. In fact, the opposite is true. They are very much in tune with what is going on around them, but their priorities are starkly different from those of a bunch of a septuagenarian voters. Do a referendum on housing, or on an environment issue and the kids will turn out in droves. Oh, wait… There was one, and they did.
6. The right-wing discovered social media. Again.
This one is a bit weird, because on the whole the Party and its minions are considered masters of social media (ab)use as it is. I mean, your average Slovenian SDS fanboi shitposter gives the most vitriolic MAGA account a run for its money. Even though the said MAGA account probably draws its salary in Pakistani rupees.
But on more than one occasion over the last two days, people in the right-wing bubble were giddy over the effect they had over social media. Granted, this was mostly NSi-adjacent circle-jerk so it could be these guys are just telling themselves their work mattered and that they don’t need legacy media. If so, they’re in for a rude surprise.
However, this drooling over social media ninja skills stands out like a sore thumb. So there might be something deeper going on there.
7. Golob government isn’t going anywhere…
Not four months prior to the election they aren’t. Of course, just like after any such result at the ballot box, the opposition starts shouting for the PM to resign. The fuck he will. Not only does the result not suggest a political realignment (see above, about the split not being along party lines), there is also historical precedent for this sort of antics failing spectacularly.
Remember Miro Cerar? Even though he enjoyed a parliamentary majority almost as big as Robert Golob does today, Cerar got his ass handed to him at a referendum on an infrastructure bill and then resigned in a fit of pique which he mistook for grand strategy.
As a result, prime minister Cerar became foreign minister Cerar after the election. The Apex Avian will not make the same mistake. He will make other mistakes, but not this one.
8. …but it should stop having NGOs write legislation for them
Yes, pengovsky gets it. The consultative referendum on assisted dying was there to drive up the EU election turnout. The government didn’t really think this was much of a priority and was happy to let coalition MPs take the lead on this one. And Jesus tap-dancing Christ, did they ever make a mess of it. Those boneheads took a bill that was drafted by an NGO-cum-lobby-group, adopted it wholesale, ignored most of 50+ pages of parliamentary legal service telling them just how flawed this bill is, and approved it.
Does this let the government off the hook? Fuck no. It didn’t provide adult supervision when the law on assisted dying needed it most. As a result, it became a sort of a vanity project by people whose starting position was that they occupy the moral high-ground. As a result they refused to listen to any sort of input. bEcAuSe tHeY wErE rIgHt.
This sort of intellectual arrogance is surely giving PTSD to the veterans of the Family Code saga. The fact that both initiatives featured some of the same people only amplifies it.
9. Primc and his posse were actually playing defence
The blame-game on the losing side and the gloating on the winning side began in earnest yesterday. In these debates, one of the most often repeated phrases was that the YES campaign will try again, possibly very soon. You know, bEcAuSe tHeY aRe RiGht!
Here’s a newsflash: the fuck they will. I mean, they might try, but they will get their asses handed to them. Again. Not just because nobody likes a sore loser. And also not just because their messaging will suck donkey balls, like it did this time around.
The main reason assisted dying in Muddy Hollows is going nowhere fast is the fact that for all their gloating and chest-thumping, Aleš Primc and his posse understand that from their point of view, they were playing defence and got lucky.
They are openly talking about preparing for future battles and are already setting the information space for them, including framing YES-leaning precincts as “euthanasia-friendly”, and such. Even though euthanasia most pointedly was not the question two days ago.
The Primc of Darkness understands that in the long-term, he is fighting a losing battle. Society is getting more pluralistic, personal freedoms are extended and traditional gatekeepers of morality (white men, mostly in robes) are either evolving or are being set aside.
Incidentally, this is the same type of criticism people (not unreasonably) use against legacy media. So, yeah.
10. Assisted dying is, well, a dead issue for least a decade
The point here is that the wheels of history cannot be stopped. But they do turn very slowly. And if Aleš Primc has anything to say about it, they will do so even slower. At least in Muddy Hollows.
The campaign against IVF for single women, which he waged in the early naughts put the kibosh on things for a quarter of a century. When it came to same-sex marriage and adoptions, he managed to stall it for more a decade. And even then both these issues were handled via a ruling of the constitutional court rather than up-and-up legislative change.
It seems reasonable to expect that the right to assisted dying will go down the same path. I pengovsky will have an update on this in about ten years or so.
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