In reply to Rog Wilko:
Clearly a referendum where the outcome is quite close will leave the "losing" side feeling hugely disappointed. Personally I'm glad we don't have more. As we have seen they are incredibly divisive.
From a constitutional and democratic perspective I can understand the concept of having a threshold for change rather than 50% + 1. But I cannot support it. I cannot support it as it is fundamentally unfair.
If you say, for example, that 60% is required to enact a change and overturn the status quo then you are actually changing individual votes. You are saying that everyone has 1 vote but actually if you are in favour of the status quo you have 1.2 votes and if you are in favour of change then you have 0.8 of a vote. You are giving the status quo an advantage. Imagine if you did this in other votes and elections! I want to have the same voting rights as everyone else irrespective of mine or their view. I don't want to look at someone with a contrary opinion and have to accept that he or she gets more voting power than me.
In terms of volumes, keep in mind that the current government was voted in with a 36.9% share of the vote when 30.6 million people voted - turnout of 66.1%
The Leave campaign got 51.9% share of the vote when 33.5 million people voted - turnout of 71.8%
Taking emotion, disappointment etc. out of it and just looking at the cold numbers, you can argue that the referendum was actually more democratic than the General Election. However this does not take into account individual seats won in individual constituencies.
I think it's easy to complain that 50%+1 feels wrong, (especially if the result goes against you), but actually the referendum result was 50%+634,751
That's a lot of votes.