United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[parochial boy]

What 'voting areas' could be bellweathers for the national result? I imagine a lot of the classical Lab-Con marginals (Nuneaton and Bedworth, Stevenage, Thurrock etc) will be at least somewhat more for Leave than the nation as a whole.

YouGov has this fascinating map of how eurosceptic it figures various parts of Britain are.

The middling areas seem to be largely rural/commuter belt areas in the North West, West Midlands and around London.

yougov.co.uk/ yougov-8545/

[parochial boy]

Yorkshire & Humber - Moderately leave as the no nonsense Yorks people dislike all the nonsense from the EU

Can we have something better than stereotypes please?  Not everyone in Yorkshire is Geoffrey Boycott.

Places like Rotherham and Doncaster are hardly bastions of metropolitan liberalism though are they? Lots of small tow Yorkshire are exactly the kinds of place that tend towards Brexit; places that have suffered deeply as a result of globalisation and don't reap the benefits of membership of the EU in the way that the big cities do.

The North West would be the same if it wasn't for Manchester and the fact that Merseyside is so massively Labour these days.

[parochial boy]

Very curious now as to what the turnout will be; on the one hand this referendum hasn't gripped the public imagination at all (even less than a GE does actually) but on the other people do seem to understand that it's important.

Would you say that low turnout favours one side or another? It seems that it would be better for the more passionate side, which, appears to be Leave.

That's the theory.

Older voters are more in favour of Brexit and are more likely to vote. Presumably that's why Cameron has extended the voter registration deadline (in order for more of the younger voters to register).

He's absolutely shameless

No wonder a lot of his own backbenchers gave him a hard time today at PM's questions. Richly deserved imo.

The deadline was extended because the registration website crashed for the last two hours before the wind closed. That is before you even get on to the ridiculous backwardness of the new requirement for individual registration.

There also does seem to be an irony in the Brexit gang complaining about people having the vote seeing their a major part of their campaign is about how "undemocratic" Brussels is.

[parochial boy]

Is no-one surprised at how high the lib dem out vote is? pretty much identical to Labour. And they have always been the most enthusiastically pro-Europe party.

[parochial boy]

It's actuallly shocking how bad the remain campaign has been, their only argument is the economy, and that is their response to every question from immigration to sovereignty.

Surely they have focus groups somewhere telling them that it just isnt cutting through? That they need to start answering questions about the other issues.

It's not like it particularly hard to answer those questions - most immigration to the UK is from outside the EU, plenty of countries have higher immigration and much betterpublic services/wages/workers rights.

And outside the EU, the UK will be forced to play by the rules, and have less say in setting them, which quite clearly means less sovereignty.

[parochial boy]

   How has the leave side addressed the issue of British citizens losing EU rights to retire in southern Europe without having to get a special non-EU citizen residence permit? I would think this would be an appealing argument for the remain side to appeal to older-middle aged voters.

No, at this point, the debate has largely come down to the Leave side repeating "Take back control! Immigration!" and the remain side repeating "The economy the economy the economy."

I think any subtlety in the debate died along time ago.

No-one seems to have cottoned on to the fact the the leave side are now claiming that if EU immigration is reduced, then there can be more immigration from the rest of the world, even though non-EU migration is actually higher then EU migration.

[parochial boy]

Incidentally, why have no MEP's bothered to have a role In the campaign? You'd think that the remain campaign would want to show our democratic representatives to people sceptical of the EU as a mysterious distant black box.

Nigel Farage and Dan Hannan have both played a pretty big role.

At which point there is surely something to say about Nigel Farage seeming reluctance to ever attend the parliament he was elected to be a representative in.

[parochial boy]

There remains a line of thought that there well be a last minute swing towasrds the status quo where undecided voters plump for the safer option. That is what seemed to happen in Scotland where the "no" vote ended up 6-7% higher than the polling in the latter stages. TNS also reported something like 32% of voters were undecided or wouldn't vote. So remain could still pull it out of the bag.

That said, I would put my money on a 5-10% leave win at this point in time, seeing as what we have seen in the last week or so is the exact opposite of a late swing to the status quo.

[parochial boy]

57 Tory MPs have said today they will vote against a George Osborne post-referendum budget.

As a budget is effectively a confidence vote, that pretty much guarantees the government will fall in the event of a no vote.

So a palace coup, or another general election? I'm not sure the general public would be able to cope with yet another election; but it would be completely unpredictable at this point.

[parochial boy]

Switzerland has voted recently against free movement of labour

Well, you see, no...

The Swiss did vote against free movement (just barely), but that hasn't been implemented yet; largely because the EU has told the Swiss where to go stick their referendum. The Swiss might yet put a cap on immigration, but just like the UK, that will probably lead to a push back from the EU.

So pulling out of Europe will do nothing to increase "democracy" or "accountability" in the UK.

[parochial boy]

I think that NBC/Survey Monkey are alright in American polling but honestly who knows how they'll do this this; I think that no one knows exactly what to poll

I don't trust that USA Today thing; simply because I don't know anything about that polling company that they've mentioned and you shouldn't trust any polling agency that doesn't release accurate tables for that sort of thing.

Survey Monkey got the general election spot on last year, apparently.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/surveymonkey-was-the-other-winner-of-the-u-k-election/

Although to what extent that was a pure fluke or not remains to be seen.

Some of their cross tabs look a bit weirs, 16% of the sample are Guardian readers? I suppose, if they mean the website rather than the newspaper that could be reasonable...

[parochial boy]

I mean, if there is no agreement post-Brexit, Britain is in for a very hard landing. Visas to travel cross-Channel, sharp reallocation of trade flows, huge financial crisis, massive expulsion of British citizens from Europe, etc., etc., etc. Of course there will be an agreement negotiated.

Pure hyperbole.

I'm on another forum discussing this referendum and a couple of Remain posters have gone completely demented because their side are now behind in the polls.

What's been written above could have been written by George Osborne and he currently has zero credibility with the majority of the British people (and deservedly so).

It's worth remembering that the European Union is primarily a political project not an economic one (with the ultimate goal being a single European state). That very often gets lost in all the heated debates that have taken place over the last few weeks.

Both Macron and Schauble have indicated that if the UK wants any sort of deal, it is going to have to accept free movement, EU laws and will have to contribute to the budget.

I suppose they are lying like everyone on the remain side is?

Whereas the myths about £350m a week, or the EU setting 60% of British laws, or the millions of Turks allegedly about to descend on the country do not reflect at all on the integrity of the leave campaign.

[parochial boy]

Someone on the UK Polling Report blog has noticed that, for the phone poll, remain had a 1% lead among people responding to the first call, but a 3-5% lead for people responding to the other calls.

Could be indicating that leave supporters are much easier to contact, and as a result, the polls may be overstating leave's actual lead?

Certainly, in Scotland, the polls were averaging about a 4% lead for the "no" campaign in the the  days before the vote, and it won by 10% in the end.

[parochial boy]

Two new polls out -

Opinium has Remain and Leave both on 44% - remain unchanged and leave +2%

Survation has remain 45% (up 3) and leave on 42% (down 3)

https://twitter.com/britainelects?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Given the last week or so, this would seem fairly encouraging for remain.

[parochial boy]

Does the Survation poll use the same methodology as the one from 3 days ago? Do to it being released so fast, I imagine not?

tabs

I haven't seen anything indicating a methodology change, could be the Jo Cox factor though, even if not actually changing anyone's voting intention, it could have made people a bit more reluctant to express support for leave on a phone poll.

Yougov have also just come up with Remain 42% (+3) leave 44% (-2%), done before the murder, which would seem good for remain although I imagine is just regression to the mean after the previous 7 point lead for leave, which was probably a bit of an outlier.

edit - and now yet another yougov which is remain 44, leave 43. I'm not ready to get my hopes up just yet though.

[parochial boy]

There is still every possibility that the polls are completely wrong. Referendums are hard enough to poll as it is, especially one that would seem to be falling completely outside of traditional party lines, meaning party loyalty is not much use as an indicator of how people might vote.

There could also be a massive "shy" effect for both leave and remain; leave voters not wanting to look racist; or remain voters who don't want to face the abuse that has been given out both on line, and face to face for remain canvassers in certain areas. That and the likelihood that "don't knows" will pull mainly for remain on the day.

There are also the persistant rumours about the Postal Vote returns being heavily "leave" even though that is to be expected, as postal voters skew old; and  it should technically be illegal for anyone to know how postal vote returns are looking, as the votes are supposed to be turned down when opened, without being looked at.

Based on today's polls, I would expect 55-45 for remain in the end.

But I wouldn't be shocked if it ends up as much as 60-40 to either side.

[parochial boy]

some are saying that although they're counting by those they'll declare it by EU Parliament regions which would just be odd.

Where have you heard that? I have only heard that results are to be declared by Local Authorities.

As far as how results might go, Sunderland will be the first to declare, as always. Sunderland is relatively eurosceptic, I can't remember where I found it, but someone has calculated, based on the general Euroscepticism of the various parts of the UK, that Sunderland will probably be about 6% more "leave" than the country.

Although that clearly has to taken with a pinch of salt, and the margins of error are massive. It means we might be able to get some sort of picture relatively early on.

[parochial boy]

Apparently the pound and the FTSE index surged at the close of business which suggests that major banks and bond traders who may have commissioned their own election day polling are increasingly confident of a Remain victory.

I've been hearing rumours that the private exit polls that some of the hedge funds commissioned may be indicating a fairly comfortable win for remain.

Remains to be seen whether that is the case though; if I remember, Yougov's "recontact" pseudo-exit poll at the General Election was just as far off the mark as all the pre-election polling.

[parochial boy]

Sky are suggesting that a UKIP private poll is showing 52-48 to Leave, but they're sceptical whether it actually does show that.

why would Farage be conceding defeat if UKIP's internal polling indicated they had won?

[parochial boy]

Ipsos Mori on the day poll: Remain 54%, leave 46%

[parochial boy]

Early counting of postal votes in Sunderland suggest a 60/40 split to Leave.
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/746098795054833668

Didn't someone post a link stating Sunderland should lean around 6 points towards leave?

I'm expecting postal votes to be more in favour of leaving than the on the day votes - so it may not be indicative of how Sunderland as a whole will vote.

Yes, bearing in mind Postal Voters tend to be older, and that many of the votes would have been sent in before the swing back to remain in the last few days.

Anything more than 45% for remain in Sunderland is encouraging

[parochial boy]

If the people of Scotland wish to leave the UK and Join the EU, then that's their democratic will, after all they voted by over 60% to stay and it's not right to be pulled out if they didn't want to.

Does this apply to the apply to the people of Northern Ireland as well, then?

No because Northern Ireland has two nations, not one, and have chosen to govern by conensus. Completely different political culture to Scotland and indeed the rest of the UK.

A major reason that the NI settlement worked is that membership of the EU made open borders with the South possible.

With Brexit, suddenly we are back to the dynamics of the 70s/80s, except with the looming prospect of a republican Catholic majority.

I am currently banking on Scotland, NI and London all breaking away and forming the new nation of NILonS.

The rump England and Wales would be in an economic state if that happened.

[parochial boy]

Regarding that petition, its now been signed by almost 2 million people. So 4-5% of registered voters, and almost 1 in 8 remain voters.

I dare say the wounds this referendum opened aren't going to heal any time soon.

[parochial boy]

This data would indicate that only a small number of actual signatories are British:

{"name":"United Kingdom","code":"GB","signature_count":354634}
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215.json

You do know that all those places like "Putney" and "Aberdeen South" are in the UK, right?

No-one is really expecting a second referendum to come out of this, it is really more an expression of anger. There might be another referendum when negotiations have concluded, but that is a way off before even being considered.

[parochial boy]

I wonder if the unexpected large vote for Brexit in Wales despite to low number of immigrants in Wales has to do with the fairly large number English immigration into Wales over the last couple of decades.  The Brexit vote in Wales might more be a vote for lower number of immigrants into England which in turn will drive down the number of English immigrants into Wales.

Unlikely, across the country, lower levels of immigration correlated mildly to a higher "leave" vote. Wales is no different.

It's been a phenomena that has been pointed out, that areas with fewer immigrants tend to be more anti-immigration; but this fits neatly into the fact that these are the poorest areas that have suffered the most from de-industrialisation, and whose inhabitants have the most to be angry about.

This has been directed at immigrants, which is sad, but not surprising given that we have had decades of them being blamed for every ill in society.