The devil's in the details. There isn't really such a thing as popular will - there are a lot of people who all want different things and who can change their minds. What can happen in practice is you have a referendum like the brexit one where there is a lot of misinformation and the vote goes 48-52 one way or the and then the more fascist tabloids go on that the result is the will of the people and anyone who questions it is an enemy of the people etc. Much of the language originates with Hitler and Stalin who used that stuff in worse ways.