Swiss Minaret vote

Over the weekend Switzerland voted in a referendum to ban Minarets (the spires on Mosques from which Muslims are called to prayer), the result of the vote was 57.5% in favour. Interestingly though the final poll before the referendum showed the opposite - voting intention in the referendum stood at 37% YES and 53% NO. The poll was conducted between Nov 9th and 14th, so there were two weeks between the fieldwork and the referendum during which opinion could easily have shifted in favour of the proposal.

What strikes me though is that it's also the perfect example of the sort of question where there would be a high risk of social desirability bias. The proposal was opposed by the Swiss government, most political parties, the churches and the media. People may not have felt able to admit to a interviewer (the polls were conducted by phone) that they were going to vote in favour of a policy targetting Muslims and the "socially desirable" thing would have been to say they were voting against it.

We will never know how much shift in opinion there was in those last two weeks, but my guess is that the polls were probably underestimating support for the measure anyway.