EU Referendum – Page 2

EU Referendum 2016 #2 – Did your constituency vote Remain or Leave?

February 19, 2017 By Nigel

NOTE 19/2/16: This post is not yet complete. I will do my best to complete it soon as possible. Since I started writing this post, additional data has been made available and I now think that 400 out of 650 seats voted Leave. You can see an outline of my older model in my YouTube clip published in November 2016.

For those used to staying up for election night, the BBC coverage of the EU Referendum on 23rd June 2016 must have been disconcerting. Where were the figures showing how many seats Leave & Remain had won? Unlike a general election where the winner is the party with the largest number of seats, the referendum was decided by a popular vote with Leave winning with 17,410,742 votes to Remain’s 16,141,241 votes.

Also different was that the results were declared for the 399 counting areas (CA) used in EU elections rather than the more familiar 650 parliamentary constituencies. Of the 399 CAs, Leave won a majority in 270 CAs as shown in figure 1. However, the counting areas vary enormously in size from 1,799 eligible voters for the Isles of Scilly to 707,293 eligible voters for the city of Birmingham which makes it difficult to compare CAs. The apparently overwhelming victory for Leave in terms of CAs could be a statistical mirage with Leave winning small CAs and Remain winning large CAs.

By-Elections #1 – How to predict outcomes in the Brexit era

February 19, 2017 By Nigel

Since the UK voted to leave the EU on 23^rd June 2016, there have been 3 contested parliamentary by-elections (Witney, Richmond Park, Sleaford & North Hykeham) and one uncontested by-election (Batley & Spen which was the late Jo Cox’s seat). Many commentators have analysed these results to see how the referendum result has impacted on parliamentary voting intentions. Whatever voter dynamics are revealed, it is reasonable to assume that they are likely to influence future by-elections. In late October 2016 just after the Witney result, I realised it could be possible to build a by-election model by combining two sources of data.

My own estimates of the Leave & Remain votes in each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies where I calculated that 400 out of 650 seats voted Leave.
My interpretation of the Lord Ashcroft “exit poll” carried out on 21^st to 23^rd June 2016 and published immediately after the results were announced.

At the time, I described my by-election modelling approach in a youtube clip and that is worth listening to. I have made some changes to my model since then so this post is the most up to date version of my model. I will illustrate the basic principle using the Witney by-election (David Cameron’s former seat) of 20^th October 2016 where the top line numbers are: