Who is NOT Voting for Brexit Anymore?

Eleonora Alabrese, Thiemo René Fetzer and Thiemo Fetzer
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Thiemo Fetzer

No 7389, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Using estimates of support for Leave across UK local authority areas constructed from a comprehensive 20,000 strong survey, we show that both the level and the geographic variation capturing differential degrees of support for Leave have changed significantly since the 2016 EU referendum. A lot of area characteristics, many of which were previously associated with higher levels of support for Leave, are now significant correlates capturing a swing towards Remain. They include, for example, the degree to which local authorities receive transfers from the EU or the extent to which their economies rely on trade with the EU, along with past electoral support for UKIP (and the BNP) and exposure to immigration from Eastern Europe. Lastly, exposure to austerity since 2010 is among the strongest individual correlates weakening the support for Leave. The evidence is consistent with the argument that the small margin of victory of Leave in 2016 was, to a significant extent, carried by protest voters, who used the EU referendum to voice their discontent with domestic social and economic developments, particularly, austerity. Lastly, we present some evidence suggesting that the UK public, even in Leave supporting areas, would be much more willing to make compromises on free movement and aspects of single market membership compared to what appears to be the UK governments negotiation objective.

Keywords: Brexit; protest voting; globalization; European Union (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F50 F60 H30 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eur, nep-int and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7389.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Who is NOT voting for Brexit anymore? (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7389

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().