Democracy depends on an understanding of the people's will, but there's one big problem: Often the people don't know what they want. And they can be manipulated.
I remember when the same-sex marriage bill was going through Parliament. Many polls showed the public to be not in favour of it, and yet it passed with a huge majority and with the exception of one or two instances of religious groups making a fuss, was accepted by the people with hardly a murmer.
Depending on the wording, one can easily get a majority of citizens to both support and oppose anything.
I recall two polls that were published at the time. 67% (ish. It was a long time ago now) of Britons "Opposed a law allowing same sex marriage," while 63% (ish) favoured a law "forbidding refusal of same sex marriage." This is so memorable because the two polls were printed in (different) newspapers on the same day.
The problem with asking people about same sex marriage in UK is that they inherently fell victim to a very common error in survey methods: the forbid-allow asymmetry. Britons tend to buck against the government telling people what to do. In this case, Britons generally supported gay marriage and the first poll suggested that the government was trying to tell Britons they HAD to allow gay marriage so although an individual being questioned might be in agreement with it, they didn't want to be told they HAD to accept it, whereas the second suggested that an 'agree' vote told the government that they COULDN'T stop gay people getting married. In this case, they would have been happy to pass a law that forbade Parliament to prevent it.
It's an exercise in the public asserting its authority over government.
Wording matters.
It's damned near impossible to predict what the British people really think about anything because depending on the wording of the question put to them, a poll can easily get a majority of citizens to both support and oppose any proposition
Interestingly enough, women were less immune to this effect. Women were 16% (ish) were more likely to support gay marriage, regardless of wording.
That's about as much as I can reliably remember of that time. I could write more about this, but it'd be stretching my memory of the event and it might play tricks on me.
Food for thought, anyway.