Context

In 2020, Uruguay’s new government packed its entire platform into a single "urgent" bill — over 500 articles, from education to public safety. A quarter of the country signed a petition to send it to a national referendum.

Process

A 13-person team from Uruguay’s National University — engineers, communicators, and data scientists — ran Polis alongside the referendum to look for something deeper than "yes or no." 16,499 people cast more than 295,000 votes.

Results

The referendum was lost by less than 1%. But Polis revealed that even where public safety divided people, surprising points of consensus broke through on other issues — bridges between groups who had felt worlds apart.

Opinion landscape