When Vote Leave campaigner Michael Gove said that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’ he was expressing the argument of populists everywhere. Today, as Britain and the world tries to interpret this unexpected victory, it is clear that nativist instincts and pent-up anti-elitist resentment can secure victory […] Read more »
Why the remain campaign lost the Brexit vote
To many people around the world, the United Kingdom’s vote, on Thursday, to quit the European Union came as a great shock. But the result, with fifty-two per cent of voters in favor leaving the E.U., shouldn’t have been such a surprise. … The Guardian has published some telling charts […] Read more »
How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday … and why
The UK has voted to leave the European Union. On referendum day I surveyed 12,369 people after they had voted to help explain the result – who voted for which outcome, and what lay behind their decision. CONT. Lord Ashcroft Read more »
Performance of the polls in the EU referendum
Seven member companies issued ‘final’ polls of voting intentions in the EU referendum. While no company forecast the eventual result exactly, in three cases the result was within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus three points. In one case Leave were correctly estimated to be ahead. In […] Read more »
The tea party spirit crossed the Atlantic during the Brexit campaign
… The winds of populism are sweeping across the Western world, and there was little reason to suppose that even an ancient and stable democracy such as Britain would develop an immunity to this pandemic. The mad-as-hell populism that in large part inspired the “leave” vote was instinctively nativist and […] Read more »
The Brexit referendum: Britain between the past and the future
… The referendum was sparked by demands from segments of the Conservative political elite for relief from the regulations of the E.U. in the name of national sovereignty. But focus groups organized for the vote revealed that most ordinary people had no idea what sovereignty actually means. Instead, the issue […] Read more »