Would 56% of the UK really vote to leave the EU?

So the main finding of this week's Opinium/Observer poll is that if presented with a hypothetical in/out referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union, most people would vote to leave.

The Observer have presented this very nicely as always with a patriotic looking Nigel Farage standing in front of a union flag but there are always a couple of caveats about polls involving referendums, Europe and particularly those involving both.

The first, from Anthony Wells, is that when a polls asks if people want a referendum on any topic the answer tends to be "yes". This is because even if people have a modicum of respect for their own local MP, they are distrustful of MPs in the aggregate and will always choose to have their own say rather than delegate authority to politicians. However, as we saw with the AV referendum and more recently with the Police and Crime Commissioner elections, wanting more direct democracy in the abstract doesn't necessarily translate into a willingness to take part if a vote actually happens.
For this reason we didn't think it was worth while even asking whether there was widespread public demand for a referendum on EU membership as the numbers would have come back as expected and in any case public demand rarely features in the decision to hold a referendum or not.

The second is from Mike Smithson which is that in the two UK wide referendums to have been held (on EEC membership in 1975 and AV in 2011) the vote for maintaining the status quo has been twice as large as the vote for change, 67% to 33% in 1975 and 68% to 32% in 2011. The implication here is that the UK tends to vote for the status quo with the campaign often focusing more on the cost of making the change (as was certainly the case with AV) than the pros and cons of the current arrangement. If a referendum had been held on whether to join the EEC before the Heath government did so then I have always thought that the public's answer would have been 'no'.

Although I have no doubt that the Opinium/Observer poll is an accurate representation of how the public would respond to such a question if asked now, it's important to remember that any actual vote would come at the end of a long and, no doubt impassioned, campaign of voter education.

When we ran the question we did discuss the possibility of giving respondents some background to help them make an informed choice as we do with work for clients when the questions are on a topic that people may have limited knowledge of. However we decided against it not only because we couldn't possibly hope to include all of the information required but also because we have no idea how the campaign would turn out and what information voters would ultimately be responding to.

With the standard voting intention question it's understood that people are responding to the current state of events and that the numbers are a reflection of how each party is doing at the moment, something which could change during an actual election campaign but where most voters can be said to be receiving a reasonably balanced mix of news praising and criticising the government.

With the European Union, there is effectively no "yes" campaign. At the moment the news that the public receives about the EU is almost entirely negative with virulent criticism from the most popular newspapers (save only the Guardian, Independent and Daily Mirror) along with news of impending financial apocalypse and of Greeks and Spaniards rioting.


Until recently I would have expected an in/out referendum on the UK's EU membership to produce a status quo result similar to the other UK wide referendums as the costs of leaving the EU became apparent and the 'leave' campaign had to sell the public on benefits which necessarily remain hypothetical. The business community would make the point about potential tariffs and the effect on exports while the basic unfairness of having to abide by EU rules but having no say in how they are made would ultimately lead more people to stick with the devil they know.

However, the seemingly never ending crisis in the Euro-zone and the possibility of dramatic changes in the institutional makeup of the EU mean that the "status quo" may no longer be the safe and benign "devil you know" and be morphing into something that fundementally changes Britain's relationship with the EU. If that happens then the structural advantage enjoyed by the status quo in any referendum starts to disappear and factors like the majority of the popular press having a very clear agenda on one side start to make a difference.