Probably that the pollers were polling the wrong type of people. Perhaps getting more older people who want the stability in their senior years that the yes vote would bring. Instead of the younger vote of young adults who don't feel they should pay for the mistakes they had no part in.

I hope it turns out all right for them, perhaps they can do something like Iceland did.

The polls were wrong.

I started to watch it, got about 20 minutes in and lost interest. It jumped around to too many different perspectives and didn't hook me at all.

Good points. Sending a bill to sites that profit from the discussion happening here could work. I mean it wouldn't be a binding debt they'd have to pay, but they might send something if they want the continued ad revenue they are getting from us. You could send them a message saying something like this

Hey we noticed that our community has been giving you a lot of ad views recently. Our cost in doing so was $X.xx. Any help you can provide so that we can continue would be greatly appreciated.

You could also put up some plain text ads that are not intrusive. Or even allow advertisers to make posts, as long as they are always clearly marked as ad posts.

And if those methods don't pay enough then I'd would think doing what wikipedia does would be the best option. Become a non-profit and run a donation drive every year.