We asked British respondents who had previously declared to have voted “leave” in the Brexit referendum which fears about European integration affected their decision. 35.9% of our sample mentioned the fear of losing jobs and social security, whereas 68.2% feared the loss of national identity and culture, and 75.5% the risk of a weakening of national democracy. Finally, 76.8% of respondents mentioned the fear of more national income being paid into the EU budget as a key driver behind their vote. Overall, these results seem to indicate that political factors related to European integration have affected “leavers” more than the economic factors.
In a probe question administered only to respondents who voted “leave”, we asked whether they would have voted differently had the EU made major concessions to the UK in order to keep it as a member state. Interestingly, almost one out of three respondents claim that they would have made a different choice if the EU had conceded more.
Here we asked all British respondents what they would vote if the referendum were to be called a second time. Most respondents would make the same choice as they did in June 2016: more precisely, 95.6% of those who voted “remain”, and 89.7% of those who voted “leave” would vote in the same way. Notably, however, these slight changes in preference would be enough to reverse the overall result of a hypothetical second referendum, with the “remain” side prevailing with 55.6% of the votes.
Photo Credits CC diamond geezer
This infographic is part of a series examining the results of an original seven-country mass survey conducted by REScEU. Click here to view all the contributions in the series.
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