Courtesy of Mish.
New online and telephone polls by the Guardian show Brexit is in the lead for the first time ever.
Are those polls flawed or did Prime Minister David Cameron’s over-the-top fearmongering have the opposite effect as intended?
UK Voters Lean Towards Brexit
Please consider UK Voters Leaning Towards Brexit, Guardian Poll Reveals.
Public opinion has shifted towards the UK leaving the EU, two Guardian/ICM polls suggest as the referendum campaign picks up pace – with voters split 52% -48% in favour of Brexit, whether surveyed online or by phone.
Previous polls have tended to show voters surveyed online to be more in favour of Britain leaving the EU. But in the latest ICM research, carried out for the Guardian, both methodologies yielded the same result – a majority in favour of leaving.
In the phone poll of more than 1,000 adults, 45% said they favoured leaving the EU, and 42% remaining, with 13% saying they did not know. Once the “don’t knows” were excluded, that left 52% in favour of Brexit, against 48% for remain.
Using online polling, 47% said they would like to leave, and 44% remain, with 9% saying they were undecided. Excluding the latter, the result was the same as the phone method – 52-48 in favour of leaving.
Last time ICM carried out a poll for the Guardian, in mid-May, remain had a 10 percentage point lead among those polled by phone, on 55% to 45%. The online method produced the same result as the latest one: 52% for leave compared to 48% for remain.
Leave in Lead
Possible Outlier
It’s possible the poll is an outlier. If so, other polls sure to come will swing the other way. As of yesterday Number Cruncher Politics reported things this way.