For the second time in a year, the public have shocked the political establishment by delivering an unexpected result.

It did the same in the USA last November. It happened in France too – its President is someone nobody thought could possibly win … What’s happening?

Why has it become so risky to ask the public what it thinks?

Those of us who study public consultations may have some explanations. So much depends upon the questions you ask – and where and how you think you wish to be influenced. Fail to persuade your stakeholders that you are likely to listen to them, and they have many ways of taking revenge.

In a consultation, if they don’t think you will listen, your critics may just bombard you with negative responses. Or they might just support other options – and reject any preferred solution. Then again, they might just ignore your consultation and campaign through the media or through politics. They might even take you to the High Court. A common theme will be to challenge and seek to undermine the assumptions you have made.

An election is very different. It is NOT a consultation, as the process itself is the ultimate  decision-making. It is different from last year’s referendum which WAS a consultation because Parliament was the only legally competent decision-maker (except that no-one pointed this out to the electors). In our representative democracy, we vote for an MP, not for a suite of policies, and therefore who knows really what specific issues people support. The question is opaque; the answer difficult to interpret. When the process delivers large majorities, this vagueness matters little. But when, as today, it delivers an ungovernable stalemate, much will depend upon figuring out what the electorate really meant.

The trouble is that partisan politicians always over-interpret the results. Supporters of BREXIT are all sure that last June 52% wanted to leave the EU. A lot of them probably felt that way. But maybe a % just wanted to express a general dissatisfaction with their lives, their jobs, their wages, their neighbours, the economy and everything else. When Theresa May interpreted the result to mean that they all wanted a BREXIT, she possibly made one assumption too many. Labour will need to guard against precisely the same mistake – assuming that all those who voted for them yesterday believe in the Corbyn manifesto. Maybe they don’t; maybe they just don’t like the right-wing tabloid press and the Prime Minister’s hair style.

Consultation professionals know from bitter experience how important it is not to over-interpret results of our dialogue with the public. We learn so much more from Focus Groups and deliberative techniques. Talk to people and they are likely to tell you why they opted for this or that option … or voted for her rather than him.

We will only understand what happened yesterday by further dialogue with those who voted. In the words of Ben Goldacre’s book title (and by the way, he was brilliant at our Conference on Wednesday) “I think you’ll find out it’s a bit more complicated than that.” *

• Published by HarperCollins 2015