United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[cp]

Boris and Zac Goldsmith to campaign for Leave side

No surprise, really, though I wonder how much support this will cost Goldsmith in the mayoral contest.

[cp]

Cameron is basically finished no matter what, the only question is whether he's in a position to hang around for a few years with the Succession Question hovering endlessly over him, or whether he has to go sooner.

Agreed. Unfortunately, either way the next Tory leadership race will prolong further the debate about EU membership, with a good chance of an anti-Europe leader at the end of it. Then it's anyone's guess what happens - another referendum? An early election? A second leadership challenge if the winner fouls up?

There are a lot of reasons to despise this whole referendum exercise, but one of the biggest has to be how it's basically just an internal Tory/Eton/Oxford spat played out on the national stage with the rest of us forced to go along for the ride.

[cp]

Will trying to keep track of those results be possible on election night, or useful for that matter? Will the results be released periodically all night by electoral district (or region or county or whatever)? Even if they are, from what I gather the privately-funded exit polls will have spilled the beans even before the polls have closed.

[cp]

Survation Poll shows basically a tie

There's a lot of data to parse through with this one. For some reason, the top line number they went with was Remain 42, Leave 45. If you dig down in the report they press undecideds (who are breaking for Remain to the tune of 2:1) about their final intentions and then factor that back into the initial responses.

The result?: 49.2 Remain, 50.8 Leave.  (a difference of 8 respondents).

Two interesting things I noticed:

- Immigration and the economy are basically tied as the most important issues
- The figures for younger voters are somewhat out of line from all other surveys, in that they show much higher support for Leave.

Ipsos-MORI: Remain 47, Leave 53. Previous poll had Remain 57-43 ahead. Don't know what the figures are including undecideds though.

They didn't include them in the data set, sadly. Impossible to know.

[cp]

This is all just terrible

Is it at all likely that this will have an impact on the vote, as tragic as it is?

In the spirit of answering the question without being bone-chillingly craven and cynical, events like these in the past have tended not to affect votes per se, but the reactions to them have.

 - The 2004 Atocha bombing during Spain's general election didn't itself cause a big shift of votes, but when the Aznar government tried to pin it on ETA despite evidence that it was Al Qaeda, voters turned against them.

 - In a more sinister example, the 1933 Reichstag fire came 6 days before an election. It probably didn't shift any votes, but it did give the Nazis the political leverage they needed to (further) suppress their political opponents, both during and after the campaign.

 - In a comparatively ridiculous final example, a few days before Obama was elected in 2008 some dopey person 'attacked' herself by carving a 'B' into her cheek. Hilariously, she did it in a mirror so the 'B' was backwards. It didn't sway any votes but it did reveal the gulf between the intensity of the anti-Obama rhetoric and the political reality on the ground.

What might be said about these sorts of incidents generally is that they apply a great deal of pressure on all actors involved. Those parties under the greatest strain already end up losing. Which side that applies to best in this referendum is perhaps a matter of debate, but I doubt the Remain folks are sweating as much as the Leavers right now.

[cp]

New poll shows a tie

Remain: 48
Leave: 48

[cp]

Conveniently, polls show a reasonably clear margin of victory now ... for both sides.

BMG online and telephone polls show opposite results

Telephone poll (incorporating undecideds): Remain 53.3, Leave 46.7
Online poll (excluding undecideds): Remain 44.5, Leave 55.5

Two points of note in these data are that the telephone/online poll discrepancy seems to have reemerged, and that the telephone poll data on undecideds corroborates data seen elsewhere: a break for Remain of about 2:1.

[cp]

Balls to the wall prediction: 64% Remain

That's not balls to the wall, that's booty to the ceiling.

I like you two

Well, the big day is here. Let's hope this thing turns out right. /YouGov has a final poll out showing Remain ahead 51/49. Their data are in line with previous polls and other pollsters on the break pattern of undecideds (2:1 for remain), the salience of specific issues to voters (Economy first, 'sovereignty' a close second, immigration an increasingly distant third), and likelihood to vote (Remains shoring up, Leave slightly wilting).

FWIW, my prediction is ...

Remain: 54.1%
Leave: 47.9

Turnout: 79%

[cp]

Confirmed. Remain 52, Leave 48

[cp]

Well, this is exactly the kind of patronising bullsh**t floating around my fb feed that eventually made me swing back to voting leave after briefly flirting with voting to remain (because I highly doubt that the referendum will be so close as to hinge on one vote). I mean, the idea that our leaving the EU will mean we cease to be a 'big player' (whatever that means) in the world is rather specious to say the least, given that we will continue to have one of the largest armies and independent nuclear deterrents in the west, one of the largest financial services centres in the world, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and representation in the G8 and G20.

 As for being a 'big player' in Europe, I think our weak position in Europe has largely been exposed by this referendum campaign - Cameron's much vaunted renegotiation of our relationship with the EU turned out to be a damp squib, and even the 'concessions' extracted there are the absolute maximum that we'll be able to wring from the EU, according to Jean Claude Juncker at least. We've also signed away our control over our own trade policy as a member of the EU (a fact that, ironically, pushed me towards the Remain camp, as our existing trade deals through the EU will be rendered null and void by leaving) and control over various other areas of policy that should be in the hands of the British policy (although not to the extent that the Leave campaign has made out). We've always had what amounts to an adversarial relationship with the EU, remaining (correctly in my view) outside of key developments in that institution over the years (the Euro and Schengen to name but two), which has also reduced our influence in Europe, as we are correctly perceived as not being fully committed to the European project. This will not change in the aftermath of the referendum, one way or another.

Boiling important political discussion down to silly and patronising memes isn't really helpful, especially when those memes put across points that are basically blatant fabrications.

You changed your vote because of Facebook memes?

It woz the memes wot won it

Simpsons meme-based voters are a critical demographic. Why else would there be so many competing examples? https://twitter.com/i/moments/745925353189814272

[cp]

So weather in London has been dreadful. Hot, humid, intermittent brutal showers, and flooding which has shutdown transportation. The boyfriend, who finished exams on friday and needed to get to South London to vote(he is for remain) is stuck on an Oxford to London bus for the third hour on what is supposed to be a 90 minute trip and is not half done. Odds of him getting to vote at all are probably around 40%, and he is far from alone. The nature of the electoral register, the need to vote at home, and the weather are meaning that the situation in London is bad.

London is mainly remain, right?

Think things like this will have a big impact on the vote?

Young remainers think they will. I personally suspect the impact will be marginal(10-15K reduced margin for Remain) though it will be concentrated among the loudest and politically engaged young voters. Oxbridge had their last exams today meaning anyone wanting to vote had to get home after exams which is looking impossible across the board. In the nationwide tallies, preventing Oxford students from voting really does not matter. Perceptionally it is huge.

Well around 30K England supporters in France probably mostly leave voters. This little dips go for both sides

Have just got off a flight from Ibiza to London - delayed by the storms and the French air traffic strike - overheard a clutch of brummy-sounding middle aged women complain how they won't get a chance to vote and wondering if they'll keep the polling places open longer.

Didn't ask them how they'd have voted, sadly.

[cp]

This isn't a bad summary of what to look for over the course of the night.