Well, this is momentum.
The Guardian reports on new Brexit polls:
Support for leaving the EU is strengthening, with phone and online surveys reporting a six-point lead, according to a pair of Guardian/ICM polls. Leave now enjoys a 53%-47% advantage once “don’t knows” are excluded, according to research conducted over the weekend, compared with a 52%-48% split reported by ICM a fortnight ago.
The figures will make grim reading for David Cameron, George Osborne and the Labour party. They follow a fortnight in which immigration became the dominant issue in the referendum campaign, with the publication of official figures showing that net migration had risen to a near-record 333,000 in 2015. Prof John Curtice of Strathclyde University, who analyses available referendum polling data on his website whattheukthinks.org, noted that after the ICM data, the running average “poll of polls” would stand at 52% for leave and 48% for remain, the first time leave has been in such a strong position.
Both online and telephone polls show the same lead for leave.
Telephone polls have previously tended to lean towards Bremain.
Meanwhile Betfair now reckons the chances of Brexit have risen from 22 percent to 35 percent over the last week.
One precedent that Remainers will be looking to for reassurance is the surge in support for Scottish independence a week or so before the Scots went to the polls. There are various reasons why that lead then evaporated, but one of them was the ‘vow’ by the three main UK party leaders promising to give the Scottish Parliament increased powers and (yet more) resources.
The problem, however, is that the only credible ‘vow’ in this case would have to come from the leaderships of the other 27 EU countries. That’s not going to happen. Remember too that the 27 had the chance to offer the UK a real deal in Brussels earlier this year. They did not, partly because the EU’s legal structure makes it very difficult to do so. But partly too because they did not think that Cameron’s ‘renegotiation’ was serious. They thought it was theater and they were right. What they didn’t expect was that the domestic audience might give that show the thumbs down. It’s telling that Cameron very rarely talks about that renegotiation any more.
My own guess continues to be that Remain will win in the end, but for the first time….Well, I won’t say any more for fear of jinxing things.
As I mentioned on Friday, most voters continue to believe that the Remain side will win. And, as we see from Betfair, the bookies (an essential resource in analyzing any UK campaign) are saying the same thing. If Brits start to believe that Brexit is becoming a real possibility, will they start to fret more about risk?
Or could we be seeing the beginning of a ‘preference cascade’ (to the extent that such a concept is applicable in a secret ballot)?
Time will tell. In the meantime, my completely unscientific view is that the Brexiteers need to maintain a five percentage point lead over the Bremainers before they can even begin to get comfortable.
Update
YouGov: Remain 39%, Leave 46%, Don’t know 11%.
Hmmm…