- Anti-Brexit campaigners have claimed that, even if everyone who voted in the 2016 EU referendum were to vote the same way again, demographic changes mean that the UK population will have a remain majority by 29 March 2019, when the UK leaves. Peter Kellner, the former YouGov president, has done the analysis for the People’s Vote campaign, which wants a referendum on the final Brexit deal. His analysis involves looking at how the people voted in 2016 and then calculating how population changes - the death of mostly older voters, based on average death rates, and the fact that people who were too young to vote two years ago are now over 18 - will have altered the mix. It assumes people would vote as they did in 2016, and does not take into account evidence showing there has, separately, been a slight shift to remain. There is a very strong correlation between being older and voting leave, and previously Kellner calculated that the crossover point - the moment when remain would outnumber leave, assuming everyone still alive voted as they did two years ago - would come in November next year. But in the light of new polling showing that the “new voters” (people who are 18 or 19 now) are even more pro-remain than assumed has led him to conclude the the crossover point will come on 19 January next year. Kellner said:
YouGov’s latest figures tell us how those who were not yet 18 last time would vote now. Those who say they are certain to vote divide seven-to-one for remain. This matters statistically: for it helps to explain why demographic factors alone will cause the UK this winter to switch from a leave country to a remain country.
Because this cross-over point occurs before March 29, 2019 – when the UK is due to leave the EU – it means the British public’s view of Brexit will have changed even without anyone who voted two years changing their mind. Young people who were not eligible to vote in 2016 and can do so now make it much harder for anyone to claim that
Brexit is still the ‘will of the people’.
Older voters are just as keen on leaving the EU as they were two years ago, younger voters are moving even more strongly into the remain camp – and the very youngest voters back continued membership of the EU by a remarkable margin. It is very rare for a significant demographic group to support one side so overwhelmingly on an issue that splits the nation down the middle.
What is more, young voters are the ones who will still be dealing with the long-term consequences of the current Brexit drama in ten or 20 years’ time, long after many leave voters have gone. Today’s young voters are making clear that they want a pro-European inheritance – and are ready to stand up and be counted, in a fresh public vote.
