This appears to have been a relatively encouraging week for Remain in the polls. Of six polls published between Monday and Wednesday that had used the same polling method as in a previous survey, five identified at least a small shift in favour of Remain. In the event, the one that did not – by ComRes for The Sun – was over a week old, and a second ComRes poll (for the Daily Mail and ITV News) joined the throng of swings to Remain.
We should though perhaps bear in mind that the date of the relevant previous poll varies considerably. In some cases this was just a week ago, while in others it was as much as a month past. However, even if we ensure the comparison is made systematically by in each case comparing the latest figures with those for the equivalent poll conducted a month ago, as is done in the table below, we still find that there has been a small swing to Remain.
Change in Remain share of Referendum Vote Intentions, March-April 2016
Most of the swings are small, and individually could simply be the result of the chance variation to which all polls are subject. Meanwhile, as the only poll conducted by telephone to put Leave ahead, the ORB poll of mid-March increasingly looks as though it was a bit of a ‘rogue’, and that thus we might want to regard the change being reported by that company as something of an outlier. But when five polls all show the same trend, it becomes much more difficult to reject the claim that there really has been some movement amongst voters as a whole.
That said, Remain should be cautious in taking pleasure in these results. Three of the polls in our table, those conducted by ComRes, Ipsos MORI and ORB, were conducted by phone, as was a second poll from ICM that is not included in the table because it was the first referendum poll that ICM have undertaken by phone, and which reported a 54% Remain vote. While all four of these polls put Remain well ahead, at 54-56% the range of support they report for staying in the EU is still well below the 60% that telephone polls were reporting on average during the winter. That the gap between the figures reported by phone and internet polls is now much narrower than the near ten point gap that was once in evidence is affirmed by the fact that ICM reported just a four point difference between the poll they conducted by phone and their most recent online poll. (Both polls were conducted over exactly the same period.)
At the same time, this week’s polls have also been consistent in reporting that Leave voters are more likely to say they will make it to the polling station. For example, both ComRes and Ipsos MORI report that Leave voters are nine points more likely than Remain supporters to say they are certain to vote in the referendum, while ICM put the gap at six points in their online poll and seven points in their phone survey. ComRes put the two camps five points apart on this criterion. At present, of these companies only ICM are taking voters’ reported likelihood of voting into account in calculating their headline vote intention figures. Doing so makes a small but detectable one point difference to ICM’s estimate of the Remain vote.
But why might the Remain vote have increased at least a little? That is rather more difficult to determine. One central issue in the campaign is, of course, the economic consequences of remaining in or leaving the EU. So perhaps the Remain’s argument that leaving would be economically disadvantageous may be beginning to percolate through to voters (though we should remember that the latest polls predate the publication of the UK government’s claim this week that leaving would cost every household £4,300 a year)? But there is limited evidence that this is the case. True, ComRes report a three point increase in the proportion who think that leaving the EU would be a ‘big risk’ for the economy, but this was counterbalanced by a two point drop in those who said it was a ‘slight risk’. Meanwhile, TNS report that at 36% the proportion who think that being in the EU is beneficial for the UK’s economy is much the same as the 35% who were of that view in February.
There is also some suggestion in some of the polls that Conservative voters in particular may have swung around in favour of Remain. ORB suggest there has been a ten point swing in favour of Remain amongst those who voted Conservative last year, while TNS report a nine point swing. However, there is no such movement in ICM’s or Ipsos MORI’s polls, while the necessary crossbreak is not available in ComRes’ mid-March poll. Meanwhile, we should bear in mind that the sample size of many of these polls means that they contain limited numbers of Conservative voters, and that thus quite substantial swings can occur purely by chance.
What does appear to be the case, if ORB are to be believed, is that the Remain campaign has become more visible (perhaps because the government’s controversial leaflet setting out its reasons for wanting voters to vote to Remain is now being distributed to voters in England). Now 44% say they have heard more from the Remain campaign, while just 25% say they have heard more from Leave. A month ago the figures were very different at 39% and 40% respectively. The last week has certainly shown the richness of the resources available to the Remain side to make an impact, including the civil service and the support of Barak Obama. We will learn from the next clutch of polls whether this advantage means Remain have indeed begun to gain some momentum.
By John Curtice
John Curtice is Senior Research Fellow at NatCen and at 'UK in a Changing Europe', Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, and Chief Commentator on the What UK Thinks: EU website.
Apologies for the duplication ,,, I thought the first comment had not been posted.Report
My respect for Obama evaporated with his crude ‘back of the queue’ threat. If a UK Prime Minister spoke in such terms to a US audience (s)he would be left in no doubt about how insultingly inappropriate it was. But ‘The Special Relationship’ is ‘unbreakable’ … how comforting. The clear agenda is pushing the unwelcome TTIP trade deal with the EU and stuff British interests and sovereignty which the US hold so dear.
And now the financial establishment forces have put the boot in with blatant self-interest as the principle motivation. Immigration, sovereignty, creaking infrastructure and the rest mean nothing to the fat cats.
Our green and pleasant land is under ever increasing threat from population pressure. When Turkey, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia join the EU, as they surely will, things will inevitably get worse. Our voice will be one of 35 – most hell bent on closer union.
Cameron’s ‘fundamental renegotiation’ that we are all supposed to be voting on is plainly a pathetic sham. The history of our attempts to influence major EU change have seen them thwarted almost every time by other nations and it will not get better if we submit further to the United States of Europe. We are a major financial contributor subsidising other EU nations and (wisely) outside the Eurozone, so we are marginalised and will be continue to be screwed if we remain.
There are advantages and disadvantages in a remain or leave decision. The hoped for level playing field for debate has been cynically torpedoed by one side. However, I have confidence in voters seeing past the orchestrated scare tactics. As the fifth most powerful global economy, we can and should make our own way in the world.
Heath and Wilson deceived the electorate into believing the direction of the Common Market was about trade when it was federal. Now we know better. Report
Right, and you make a very good point when you say we are frequently thwarted. That’s not just because the other EU members have it in for us. It is because there are some pretty fundamental difference between us and them, and since there are many more of them, they will win every QMV vote.Report
My respect for Obama evaporated with his crude ‘back of the queue’ threat. If a UK Prime Minister spoke in such terms to a US audience (s)he would be left in no doubt about how insultingly inappropriate it was. But ‘The Special Relationship’ is ‘unbreakable’ … how comforting. The clear agenda is pushing the unwelcome TTIP trade deal with the EU and stuff British interests and sovereignty which the US hold so dear.
And now the financial establishment forces have put the boot in with blatant self-interest as the principle motivation. Immigration, sovereignty, creaking infrastructure and the rest mean nothing to the fat cats.
Our green and pleasant land is under ever increasing threat from population pressure. When Turkey, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia join the EU, as they surely will, things will inevitably get worse. Our voice will be one of 35 – most hell bent on closer union.
Cameron’s ‘fundamental renegotiation’ that we are all supposed to be voting on is plainly a pathetic sham. The history of our attempts to influence major EU change have seen them thwarted almost every time by other nations and it will not get better if we submit further to the United States of Europe. We are a major financial contributor subsidising other EU nations and (wisely) outside the Eurozone, so we are marginalised and will be screwed again.
There are advantages and disadvantages in a remain or leave decision. The hoped for level playing field for debate has been cynically torpedoed by one side. However, I have confidence in voters seeing past the orchestrated scare tactics. As the fifth most powerful global economy, we can and should make our own way in the world.
Heath and Wilson deceived the electorate into believing the direction of the Common Market was about trade when it was federal. Now we know better.
Report
I find the remark by Zana J surprising. How can you fortell the future? It’s like saying as a citizen of one of the southern states that you wouldn’t want to be a citizen of the United States of America. How can you know that in advance?Report
There are few things you can know in advance with certainty. But that’s where democracy comes in. It allows us to make bets on the future and also to correct our mistakes.
That is what we will be giving up if we integrate with the EU. The EU has a clear agenda. It simply isn’t set up structurally to allow its citizens to change its policies.
Greece, Italy and Portugal have already found out that the EU can in effect veto Governments or individual ministers that they find unacceptable.Report
I think Leave will win. I think there is a little too much polling people in Urban areas and not enough in provincial areas, where support for Brexit is much higher. Are the pollster taking into account that ethnic minorities and Roman Catholics are more likely to vote Remain as most ethic minorities are also religious ones. Religion and not social class is the main determiner of how you vote Report
In respect of sovereignty, we accept some limits to our sovereignty because there is an overall benefit to us. We share some sovereignty as part of NATO because it makes us safer; we share some sovereignty as part of the World Trade Organization because it makes us richer and we share some sovereignty as part of the United Nations because it makes the world more stable. Even at a personal level, we accept limits to our ‘sovereignty’ imposed by laws which prohibit things like theft; we do this because it makes us more secure.
We share, and should continue to share, some sovereignty with the EU because it provides an already-agreed free trade agreement making us richer and it has provided 50 years (and counting) of peace and stability, making us safer and more secure. The latest agreements give us the option to decline ‘ever closer union’ and the Euro if that is what we want. ‘No man is an island’, wrote John Donne; nor is Britain, except geographically. I shall vote Remain.Report
Well saidReport
Let us remember that Cameron is asking us to vote to stay in a “REFORMED” European Union. One thing we can be certain of is that on June 23rd the EU will certainly not be REFORMED in any sense of the word. Cameron is asking us to vote for something that will not and cannot exist on referendum day.
Nor do we have the privilege of seeing what this “reformed” EU will look like. We have no manifesto of the “reformed” structure from Cameron, Merkel, Juncker Schulz, Hollande or anyone else. All we know is that as we see Merkel trying to herd cats in the direction she wants to go, every member is acting in its own interests under a crumbling facade of unity.
We did not sign up to the Euro, we did not sign up to Schengen. We are, as a nation and because of our history naturally Eurosceptic. Let’s finish the job off and vote to leave this failed project.Report
Uk should never ever forget that the whole czech republic and almost 90 percent of the former communist countries and their families are moving and have now started living permanently in the United Kingdom. Apart from problems of housing, NAH etc we should all wait and see the kind of social tensions that would start to build up in the next five year when they become qualified to stay here permanently and become qualified to apply for UK citizenship. I really struggle to understand to understand people when they say that feel uncertain about what is going to happen in an event of voting to leave the European Union while they just don’t easily ask themselves as to how even small nations are able to stand on their own without being members of the EU. Let alone mentioning countries such as US Canada, Australia etc. Are they not standing alone as nationsReport
The whole Czech Republic …. living in the UK? We lived in the Czech Republic for 6 years and had many friends there. I can assure Pete that those Czech friends of ours are still in the Czech Republic, not in the UK! Sadly, we haven’t even got them to come to the UK on holiday!Report
Well if we are going to indulge in overblown statistics, then half of pakistan and India have come here too! Unlike EEC immigrants, about half of these immigrants have no NI number and they are either working in secret sweatshops as slaves or they are unemployed.For more accurate info, check immigration statistics.Report
I think the scare mongering though is starting to work. time and again we hear (question time etc) about lack of facts but the leave campaign cant really provide anything other than repeating the amount we give the EU each week. At the very minimum they should be telling us what laws/powers etc might no longer be enforceable – we get good rights for example for redundancy payouts – does leaving immediately mean they are invalid? surely we can choose to keep any of the current laws until we determine we WANT to change them?Report
That is precisely why they want us to vote leave so they can tip Cameron out and then change the law. Plenty can be done before the next election and even then,would labour get in with its views on defence putting the Nation’s ‘security’ at risk?Report
Downing street is really pushing it. 9.3 millions of public money wasted on a leaflet, All the big guns laying down the law on how we need to vote or like Chicken Licken the sky will fall in on us – what a load of rubbish. The people of this country are not stupid and can make up their own minds without Cameron calling on Obama to support him and his crew. The United States is only interested in the United States and what’s best for them not what is best for the UK. No way would they want a federal America – and this is where we are heading – Be warned.Report
I believe there’s a state sponsored conspiracy to make his vote in I was up in Liverpool and all my Leave leaflets went I think people still haven’t made up their minds. As for Obama he wants an easy life and he is a hypocrite telling us 2 remaining when if he was face with the same situation in America he would opt out full . I also want to emphasize the bias of the media in particular the BBC they’re only really covering one side of it so what do you expect with these p these opinion pollsReport
NO one or organisation will make any difference to how i am going to vote, from cameron to obama to god himself,. No amount of scaremongering or data published about what will happen if we vote to leave will make any difference. I am determined to vote to leave this decrepit organisation and the more scaremongering and data and powerful organisations and people the remain camp get to support their view the more determined i am to vote leave. Report
I find it very disturbing that a referendum with a potentially catastrophic result for the future of our children and grandchildren has been imposed on the UK by the leadership of the governing party mostly to placate its more extreme members and to fight off a challenge by UKIP. When one lists the areas where the UK has actually gained over the last 40 years from membership of the EU – from security to business investment to higher education – then even a relatively sceptical observer might conclude that we are at risk of provoking a national catastrophe for the sake of party ideology. Politicians such as Duncan-Smith and Boris Johnson would throw up their hands in horror and shriek with indignation if they were to be compared to the late Erich Honecker or Nicolai Ceaucescu – but they are just as blinkered and ideologically hidebound as those late despots.Report
No begged questions there, of course. All we have, we got from the EU. We created nothing for ourselves. It’s all so clear now.Report
A comment you made is a bit self defeating. You claim we are getting a referendum purely because the govt wanted to fight off a challenge from UKIP. They got elected because they promised a referendum but in reality thought like everyone else they would be in another coalition and would be scuppered by the Lib Dems. Getting an outright majority left them with no option but to give us a referendum. Had UKIP got MPs and built up their base in the next few years they may well have ended up with an outright majority themselves in which case they would have voted to leave the EU and we would have had no say at all.
As to National catastrophe…I’m a relatively sceptical observer of what has been happening in the last couple of decades since Maastricht and I believe the catastrophe is being linked to a sinking ship that is the EU.
As to the references to Erich Honecker or Nicolai Ceaucescu. Appeasement at that stage led to the second war.What about Chamberlain and his peace in our time when he came back from Munich. The EU is a cannibal state and will eat up its neighbours without a second thought. Report
I refer to your comment Re sinking ship .Hope people will have the good sense to bail before it hits the
rocks.(This is inevitable) As for Cameron he becomes more of an embarassment every day.
I may have been tempted to reconsider but with him in charge if Remain win its very worrying.Report
UKIP might be like Obi Wan. If they (their dream of leaving the EU anyway) is struck down, they will become more powerful than you can ever imagine.. well they might anyway. Worked for the SNP.. so far. Report
THOSE WHOM THE GODS WISH TO DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE MAD !Report
Well, did you see the Cameron and Obama show from the Foreign Office ? – Great wasn’t it ? ! Although I’m a subject of Her Majesty, ( The key is in the description, – United KINGDOM ! ), I am now clear how to vote. So pleased to have The President of the U.S.A. come to tell me which way to vote, and now with all the Leaders of the Parties in Westminster, I have a clear understanding that I have to vote to stay in ! Silly me, thinking there was any truth being told by UKIP et.al., they were just rocking the boat, weren’t they ? ! Talk about the appointees at the top of the E.U., and that being anti-democratic. What tosh ! Mr.Juncker letting slip that the E.U. had failed, and was not respected by the people in all 28 Nations. – I’m sure he was just having a bad day ! – We all have them, don’t we ? ! Now for the referendum. We have all got it clear in our minds, haven’t we, and like good little boys and girls, we will be obedient to what we have been told to do, and with 100% vote to stay in, we can spread the Love across Europe, and America, holding aloft our support for TTIP. It’s all clear now ! Report
I don’t need lectures on how to vote from Obama. The leader of a country where 50 million people live in poverty. Where a teenager can walk into a shop and buy a machine gun.
Obama was speaking from self interest. In 12 months time, he will be forgotten.Report
I think we should look at polls against the background of what has happened recently. This week we have gone from 50/50 to 54/46, but all that happened was the Treasury prediction and Obama’s visit, plus Cummings’ disastrous appearance before MPs.
In other words, the events that took place were all perception events. And when most people don’t have a firm grasp of the economics of the EU, perception events can have quite an impact.
The Treasury has shot its bolt. We won’t get another prediction from them. Obama can’t visit twice. Cummings will be shut away so he can’t embarrass Leave again.
I think that Remain have had a good week, but they are peaking too early, and if they trot this stuff out again the reaction will be “Not this again”.
If Leave are smart, they will get back to discussing sovereignty and democracy, because that is where Remain have no answers.Report
I would not wish to leave the EU if we had a strong P.M However I am worried what will happen if we stay in.
David Cameron is subsevient and I have no confidence in such a weak person who shows no strength of
character. He has already let down the electorate being myself who voted him in,Hasnt anyone noticed hes
broken a manifesto pledge or are we so out of touch that hes got awy with so much nobody cares any more.I
to am worried for my grandchildren.Report
I would never vote to leave the EU until we have a democratic United Kingdom. At present we have an unelected Head of state, an unelected upper chamber (800 members) and a broken voting system where where thousands of citizens ( sorry subjects) votes do not count. How is it we have a government that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing that can be voted into power with only 25% of those eligible to vote. Perhaps you could contact the BBC/Channel 4 to do a progrmme about democracy. If we were to leave the EU now the Conservatives would bring in The Right To Work law which would kill off our unions. Zero hour contracts would increase from one million to four or five. They will carry on running down and privatising our national health service but at a much faster rate. I am 70 now and for me its all too late but I fear for the future of my children/grand children. Report
head of state has no political power whatsoever.
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a rather naive statement
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Naive to think our head of state has no political power what so ever
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We are citizens. Calling us subjects just makes you look ignorant.Report
Good point. Its extraordinary to me that people complain about the EU being “undemocratic”, when we are each able to elect an MEP to the European Parliament, who has roughly the same weight (1 vote in 700) as an MP in the Westminster Parliament. Plus EU law is approved not only by the MEPs, but by national governments, including ours, who are also elected, whereas the UK’s second chamber is unelected. Report
You will soon discover just how undemocratic the EU is if we decide to remain. Think how you would feel if the migrant crisis, which is virtually out of control, resulted in significant gains to the European far right parties such as Pegida etc in Germany, the National Front in France and other similar groups in Eastern states, And then think what would happen if they began to take control and started to influence policy, perhaps even start running things. If its scenarios to scare your children with, this tops anything the remainder camp could ever come up with. If you think I am being paranoid, go and watch ‘World at War’ or ‘Nazis – a Warning from History’ to see what happens when the Continent has one of its frequent bouts of collective madness. Report
The UK leaving the EU would exaggerate the effects of far right parties winning in Europe!Report
No, the real danger is that if the UK remains in the EU and rightwing parties take over, we become a force multiplier for them. If we leave, the European right wing can do what they want, but they won’t be able to use us.Report
You are absolutely correct. Brexit will be the start of a process of reform. Reform of our ineffectual election system, a chance to sort out the “old boy network” of career politicians freeloading from the EU gravy train.
Brexit provides a hope for improvement in all our lives. Report
How surprising it is that so many people want to come to the awful country in this description. But then, as someone who wasn’t born or brought up here, and who has worked with the EU institutions and lectured in EU law, I suppose I may see only the best side of the UK, and can’t recognize this gentleman’s analysis. My own analysis and experience lead me to conclude that the UK should exit the EU for many reasons, economic and political. Its objective is the creation of a single European government to which national parliamentary sovereignty is eventually fully transferred and in which the UK’s voting influence will be negligible. That is not a nation I would want to live in. Report