What were the Greeks thinking? A poll taken just before the referendum...

Sunday’s referendum asked the Greek people a very specific and complicated question: Whether voters agreed to accept the proposal the country’s creditors had made on June 25, 2015. But everyone understood that the vote would have much wider implications for Greece’s membership in the euro and the European Union.

What exactly these implications would be, however, was highly contested during the one-week campaign. The government argued that a no (“OXI”) vote would give Greece a better negotiating position, which would let it quickly secure a deal that would end austerity. The “yes” camp, in contrast, warned that a no vote would lead to “Grexit,” or Greece’s departure from the euro zone and possibly the E.U., and therefore even worse economic hardship in the months to come.

The referendum result was much more definitive than expected: more than 61 percent voted “no.” But Greece’s future is now highly uncertain. Euro-zone and E.U. politicians have made it clear that Prime Minister Tsipras’s promise of a better and quickly negotiated deal isn’t forthcoming. No one knows what will happen next...