United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[Phony Moderate]

I'm dreading this. Not the result, but the campaign. Ugh.

[Phony Moderate]

Lots of Eurosceptic shouts from the Left in recent days...could make this more interesting.

[Phony Moderate]

Starting to think that it could actually happen...

[Phony Moderate]

So the political career of either Boris or Dave may very well end in four months time.

[Phony Moderate]

Utterly bizarre statement being made by Boris now, even by his standards. Seems to think that a Leave vote will lead to another round of negotiations.

[Phony Moderate]

For anyone on here that refuses to believe a federal European superstate is just around the corner here is a quote from pages 4 and 5 from the Five President's Report written by Jean-Claude Juncker published last June...]

However this paper is about the European economic and monetary union (=eurozone), so it does not affect the UK.

Not at the present time, no.

[Phony Moderate]

Trump has endorsed Brexit. That alone should be reason enough for every decent person to vote to stay.

I don't go around saying that people should vote for Brexit because war criminals like Tony Blair and misogynists like Jeremy Clarkson support Bremain...

[Phony Moderate]

Well, you're certainly convincing me.

[Phony Moderate]

Well, you're certainly convincing me.

I've given given up on convincing racist xenophobes and other assorted Trumpists.

Seems reasonable enough; not sure what all that has to do with me though.

[Phony Moderate]

I wonder what turnout will be. I've been looking at some odds and the punters seem to think that it will be at 2001 GE levels (high 50s). Anecdotally, I'm hearing more discussion about this in the drinking holes etc than I heard about the general election during April 2015.

Remember, 42% actually bothered to turn out for the AV referendum, despite the campaign being even more pathetic than this one, despite it being that an issue that few people really care about and despite the polls showing an overwhelming No lead.

[Phony Moderate]

The turnout in the AV Referendum in 2011 was 42% and in the general election last year it was 66%. Split the difference and you get 54%.

If that turns out to be the case then each side will get between 12 and 14 million votes if it's a close run thing.

[Phony Moderate]

There will be no television exitpoll on June 23. The broadcastcompanies agreed to that, because they have no clue of the electorate and turnout (Source: Bloomberg).

In reality it's because they don't want to cough up the £££.

[Phony Moderate]

I assume if leave wins and Cameron resigns it's a good bet Johnson will win the leadership election

The "good bet" doesn't usually win the Tory leadership. I'd say it'd be Gove.

[Phony Moderate]

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.

[Phony Moderate]

Might be worth doing a prediction competition. Maybe with the following:

Overall result
Results by region
Turnout %
Voting area with highest Leave %
Voting area with highest Remain %
Results in the constituencies/voting areas of the major party leaders and leading figures in the campaigns (Boris and Alan Johnson, George Osborne, Kate Hoey, Frank Field, Michael Gove etc)

[Phony Moderate]

Here's a useful resource which contains the 2014 Euro election results by counting area.

[Phony Moderate]

Given the rarity of referendums here the personalities in the campaigns matter more than they would do if we were like a Switzerland or a California (i.e. where the issue at hand matters much more and the personalities matter less).

[Phony Moderate]

He also rambled on about the threat of NHS privatisation if we leave, seemingly forgetting the record of his own government on the NHS.

[Phony Moderate]

I recall them also taking back some poll during the general election campaign. And for what it's worth, the election result turned out to be similar to what the said poll was showing.

[Phony Moderate]

how and why is john major still relevant?

Well, the other three living PMs are Blair, Brown and Cameron.

[Phony Moderate]

I wonder how much correlation will be seen in London between the Remain/Sadiq vote and the Leave/Zac vote.

[Phony Moderate]

I'm going to go ahead and predict it will beat the 2001 GE turnout.

[Phony Moderate]

Regarding turnout, this story has been going around today. But they probably take exactly the same precautions in general elections.

[Phony Moderate]

Regarding turnout, this story has been going around today. But they probably take exactly the same precautions in general elections.

The "certain to vote" % (10/10) in the latest polls is only 70% though ...

I think it will be more like 70-75% in the end.

Which would still be the highest (by some distance) UK-wide turnout this century.

There may be many cases of people finally being able to convince their normally apolitical family members/friends to turn out on this occasion.

[Phony Moderate]

There are SNPers who oppose independence, don't forget.