FROM Brexit to Bucharest all European governments are discovering the same thing. If you want something, don’t ask the voters. Over the weekend Romanians were asked if they wanted to change their constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. All the polls showed that the overwhelming majority of Romanians agreed with the change. But they, and the main political parties that jumped on this conservative bandwagon as a way of attracting voters, were wrong. The referendum, which required a turnout of 30% in order to be valid, failed when only 20.4% voted.

Gay marriage is not legal in Romania. Civil partnerships are not on the statute books either, but legislation is in the pipeline to make them legal for same-sex (and other) couples. The referendum was seen as a way of heading off the legalisation of gay marriages in the future. Three million signatures calling for a referendum had been gathered by the conservative Coalition for Family.

Romania’s ruling Social Democrats endorsed the proposition, as did the opposition National Liberal Party. According to Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, a historian and former prime minister, both parties saw the referendum as a way of attracting voters for next year’s European elections. There are no mainstream parties in Romania of either the extreme right or left, but both sides have long sought to win votes that used to go to a far-right nationalist party, which in 2000 garnered almost 20% of the vote. In the event, Mr Ungureanu reckons, most voters could not understand why they were being asked to vote on an issue they cared little about.

According to Oana Popescu, the director of the GlobalFocus Centre, a think-tank, the low turnout showed that the Romanian Orthodox Church, to which a majority of Romanians adhere, if only nominally, has a lot less influence than thought. Secondly, it demonstrated that the ruling Social Democrats, under the leadership of Liviu Dragnea, were wrong if they thought they could distract voters from the party’s current travails. It is seen as tarnished by corruption, even as it simultaneously rolls back successful anti-corruption initiatives in the judiciary. Mr Dragnea was convicted on corruption charges in June but is now appealing against the verdict.

Even though the referendum has failed, the political forces unleashed by it have certainly not run their course. According to Mr Ungureanu, many of those behind the Coalition for Family have their political origins in far-right groups that admire the inter-war Iron Guard, an extreme anti-Semitic, fascist party with close links to the church.

Around 90% of those that did turn out voted in favour of the proposition. After the results became clear, Mihai Gheorghiu, the coalition’s spokesman said: “Let’s be happy for this day...The Christian vote exists.” Calls have now begun for the coalition to use the referendum as a springboard to form a political party which can represent socially conservative, nationalist and anti-EU voters. A statement had earlier blamed the referendum’s failure on a “boycott of all parties...primarily directed against the Christians of Romania.” Groups behind the coalition are connected with far-right parties in the rest of Europe, many of whom in turn have warm relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.