United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[YL]

Gibraltar gets a vote but do Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Mann, etc? Would seem grossly undemocratic if they didn't given the topic.

Gibraltar is fully integrated into the EU as part of the UK, where as the Crown Dependencies aren't.

It's part of the EU, but not integrated into the UK: it's a British Overseas Territory.  The other British Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies aren't part of the EU, and don't get a vote in European elections, but Gibraltar is and does (as part of the South West region).  OTOH, like the other Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies, it isn't represented in the Commons.

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I think this is because there's an elections office for all of Northern Ireland rather than local government being responsible for elections as in the rest of the UK.

[YL]

It looks like most Cabinet ministers are coming down on the "Remain" side, with Michael Gove and IDS being the most prominent exceptions.

Predictably the right-wing media are gathering on the "Leave" side.  The Mail, the Express and the Telegraph certainly are.

[YL]

What will be Labour's position?  While I am the majority of Labour's MPs are pro-EU I recall that Corbyn himself has some anti-EU views.

In the Observer, 21 February:
Cameron’s deal is the wrong one: but Britain must stay in Europe, by Jeremy Corbyn.

There are a handful of "Leave" Labour MPs; Frank Field (Birkenhead) is one name I've seen in the last few days.

[YL]

The Guardian has a list of MPs and their stances:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/feb/23/how-will-your-mp-vote-in-the-eu-referendum

The following Labour MPs are listed as "Leave":
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley)
Frank Field (Birkenhead)
Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Hall Green)
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall)
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North)
Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr)
Graham Stringer (Blackley & Broughton)
Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston)

(This looks to be at least as much right-wing mavericks as the traditional left.  I presume the concentration in Birmingham is just a coincidence.)

The following Labour MPs are listed as "Undeclared":
John Cryer (Leyton & Wanstead)
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire)
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck)
John Mann (Bassetlaw)
Grahame Morris (Easington)
Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
John Spellar (Warley)

All SDLP, Sinn Féin, SNP, Lib Dem, Plaid, Green and Independent MPs are listed as "Remain"; all UUP MPs are listed as "Not declared".

[YL]

I think Osborne is too pro-EU to win a Tory leadership election at the moment.  Though there would be the caveat that the MPs might offer the membership Osborne and someone even less palatable to the base.

[YL]

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/

Interesting, but treat with several pinches of salt for certain individual areas.  Sample sizes are pretty small, and the samples are probably not properly random.

It does suggest that "rural areas in inland southern England" might be a possible answer to the bellwether question.

I suspect the answer may be in my first paragraph above, but why would Sandwell and South Tyneside stand out so much from their neighbours?

[YL]

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.

[YL]

Is there a recent poll broken down by (current) party allegiance?  Or party they voted for last year, or something.

I wonder which way UKIP voters are favoring??

YouGov, fieldswork 5-6 June, has, on 2015 vote:

Con: Remain 39 Leave 50
Lab: Remain 61 Leave 26
Lib Dem: Remain 61 Leave 28
UKIP: Remain 5 Leave 91

[YL]

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.

I agree, but I think they think that once it actually comes to making the decision waverers will vote based on the economy.

Cassius makes a good point about Cameron.  His past pandering to Euroscepticism (including, tbh, the very fact that we're having this referendum in the first place) has made him a very unconvincing spokesman for Remain, however strong the arguments he's making now.

[YL]

Problem for the Leave Camp, is some of the voters they really need, haven't voted and might not vote, places like Doncaster, Stroke-on-Trent, Great Grimsby, Bromwich and Leigh, which are labour heartlands and a fertile ground for brexit, have the lowest turnout in the country. With parts of stroke on Trent bellow 50% turnout.

Is the health situation in the Potteries that bad?

[YL]

The turnout question is a fascinating one because no one really knows at all what to expect. Outside the small dedicated cores on either side the sort of enthusiasm that permeates during a General Election (and which was absolutely palpable during the Scottish referendum) is not present. Normally this would automatically mean a sub-50 turnout, but against that there is also clearly a widespread understanding that the vote is Important. This means that, and really unusually for Britain, a lot of people will be voting without enthusiasm (myself included). So the question then becomes: how many? Neither campaign knows because its pretty clear that neither have a great handle on things. The pollsters don't know because they never do (not even in a GE).

Here (west Sheffield) it feels more like a General Election than a local one.  Some roads in Broomhill have a Remain poster in nearly every other house.  (OTOH, Leave is nearly invisible, but that's not particularly surprising.)

However, I do realise that here is not typical.

[YL]

Someone on another forum is spreading a rumor that internal polling in clacton has it 52-48 for leave.

Is that a supposed remain, leave or both area?

Its the area where UKIP has an MP, so very bad for Leave if true.

It's dire for Leave if accurate, but rumoured internal polling?  Excuse me while I find several pinches of salt.

[YL]

Who are the UKIP/Remain voters

Protest voters.

(Or people who have seen sense in the last year...)

[YL]

I'm very disappointed, and rather concerned about what happens next.

It looks like there was a very strong correlation between "marginalisation" and Leave in England and Wales, with the noticeable exception of Liverpool.  Sheffield must have been very, very polarised, based on what I could tell of what was going on in the inner west.

[YL]

Also, what is wrong with our polling industry?

It seems the privately commissioned exit polls (as well as the other polls released on the day) were the cause of some of the pre-Newcastle/Sunderland optimism for Remain, so they weren't up to much either.

The demographic model the BBC were using had its faults, but correctly indicated that those early results were bad news.  Could John Curtice and team have carried out a proper exit poll if given the resources to do so?

[YL]

How does New Hall differ from the rest of Sutton Coldfield?

[YL]

   I'm wondering about how the Labor party vote went in non-London area Labor held seats.  If in fact 70% of Labor voters in total voted against Brexit, how did so many Labor held seats go for Brexit?  Would it be something like 40% of Labor voters in these areas going for Brexit, plus the UKIPers in the district, plus 60% of Tory voters, all of this combined equaling the big majorities for Brexit in so many of these areas?

You would also need to consider people who don't normally vote.  On Hanretty's list (which obviously isn't entirely accurate, but is the best we've got) one of the strongest Labour seats for Leave was Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, where Hanretty estimates a Leave vote of 71%.  The general election turnout there was just 55.6%, in Hemsworth 58.3%, in Wakefield 60.9%, and in Morley & Outwood (partly within the borough) 53.3%, and the referendum turnout in Wakefield district was 71.2%.

But we're never going to know exactly how things broke down.

[YL]

Hanretty's model overestimates Leave on Merseyside.

In Liverpool, he has Leave votes of 35%, 61%, 44% and 59% for Riverside, Walton, West Derby and Wavertree respectively, and 56% in Garston & Halewood (the majority of which is in the city).  Crudely averaged, these give an even split or very slight Leave majority, but the city voted 58% Remain.

In Sefton, he estimates Leave wins in all three constituencies (52% in Sefton Central and Southport, 59% in Bootle), but Remain won the borough.

Similar calculations suggest significant overestimation of Leave support in Wirral and Knowsley.

OTOH, in Sheffield the citywide result matches his model pretty well, though unfortunately the count wasn't done by ward so we'll never know just how polarised the result was.  (Hanretty's model has Leave votes of 30% in Central and 35% in Hallam, but 58% in Heeley, 61% in Brightside & Hillsborough and Penistone & Stocksbridge and as high as 67% in South East.  I don't find these numbers implausible.)

[YL]

Do we have any idea how postal votes have been taken into account in these ward figures?  I guess either they've been excluded or they've been distributed among the wards somehow...

[YL]

A comment on Lib Dem Voice by Dore & Totley councillor Joe Otten says they have box counts which give Sheffield Hallam as 2:1 remain on the day, and postal votes for the city as a whole being 5:4 leave.  (That would be very much in line with Chris Hanretty's estimate for Hallam, which was 35% Leave.)

Given the council area results, all South Yorkshire constituencies outside Sheffield must have voted Leave unless something very weird was going on.

There will be some other council areas which voted strongly Leave and are similar enough to constituencies to be confident the constituencies must have done so too, e.g. Bassetlaw.

[YL]

A comment on Lib Dem Voice by Dore & Totley councillor Joe Otten says they have box counts which give Sheffield Hallam as 2:1 remain on the day, and postal votes for the city as a whole being 5:4 leave.  (That would be very much in line with Chris Hanretty's estimate for Hallam, which was 35% Leave.)

Given the council area results, all South Yorkshire constituencies outside Sheffield must have voted Leave unless something very weird was going on.

There will be some other council areas which voted strongly Leave and are similar enough to constituencies to be confident the constituencies must have done so too, e.g. Bassetlaw.

I imagine Sheffield Central would have also be remain, probably by quite a wide margin though it does contain Manor Castle which probably would have been strongly leave which would have knocked down Remain's margin a bit. Sheffield South East, Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, and Penistone and Stocksbridge (part in Barnsley) would obviously have been heavily leave given their demographics. But the question is how would have Sheffield Heeley have voted? I think it contains some middle class wards in the West of the seat. I imagine it would have voted leave but by a much closer margin than the other three but I'm not sure, does anyone have any idea?

I basically agree with you, but other than the Hanretty estimates and things like poster displays during the campaign I have no real evidence.  Central must have been strongly Remain, in spite of the Manor.  Heeley does indeed contain some areas which will have been strongly Remain (like Meersbrook) but I think they will have been outvoted.  B&H was probably a little less Leave than South-East (Burngreave was presumably Remain, and Hillsborough was probably quite close) but more Leave than Heeley.

[YL]

Has anyone done estimates for the Liverpool constituencies? Wouldn't be surprised if Walton, West Derby and Garston and Halewood (which includes a bit of Leave-voting Knowsley borough - hence the Halewood part) all voted Leave; surely Riverside was the most Remain.

Chris Hanretty has estimates for the whole country:
https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/revised-estimates-of-leave-vote-share-in-westminster-constituencies-c4612f06319d#.ab4newhm1

(These are revised figures from the ones discussed previously, which were definitely off for Liverpool.  I haven't checked these ones.)