Are you paying attention America?
Yesterday, the UK voted to leave the European Union. On referendum day, Lord Ashcroft surveyed 12,369 people after they had voted to help explain the result – who voted for which outcome, and what lay behind their decision.
Lord Ashcroft polls – 70% of Muslims voted to remain in the UE. This provides additional refutation of the claim made by our rulers that immigration doesn’t change anything. In the Scottish referendum, a majority of people born in Scotland voted for independence; it was the votes of (first-generation) immigrants that swayed the result in favour of maintaining the United Kingdom. Now, in this second referendum, the British people as a whole might well have lost their independence because of the votes of African and Asian colonists who only arrived in their country within the last few decades. In the end, this was narrowly averted. But it shows the extent to which the demographic window is closing on the hopes for European survival.
White voters voted to leave the EU by 53% to 47%. Two thirds (67%) of those describing themselves as Asian voted to remain, as did three quarters (73%) of black voters. Nearly six in ten (58%) of those describing themselves as Christian voted to leave; seven in ten Muslims voted to remain.
A majority of those who backed the Conservative in 2015 voted to leave the EU (58%), as did more than 19 out of 20 UKIP supporters. Nearly two thirds of Labour and SNP voters (63% and 64%), seven in ten Liberal Democrats and three quarters of Greens, voted to remain.
Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. One third (33%) said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.” Just over one in eight (13%) said remaining would mean having no choice “about how the EU expanded its membership or its powers in the years ahead.” Only just over one in twenty (6%) said their main reason was that “when it comes to trade and the economy, the UK would benefit more from being outside the EU than from being part of it.”
A small majority of those who voted to remain think that for most children growing up today, life will be better than it was for their parents; leavers think the opposite by 61% to 39%. Leavers see more threats than opportunities to their standard of living from the way the economy and society are changing, by 71% to 29% – more than twice the margin among remainers.
Nearly three quarters (73%) of remainers think life in Britain is better today than it was 30 years ago; a majority (58%) of those who voted to leave say it is worse.
