The Sun on Sunday commissioned polling from DeltaPoll, which says 55% of voters want to leave next March with or without a deal (HERE). It also claims more remainers have switched to leave than the other way. According to DeltaPoll, 15% of those who voted remain in 2016 would now vote leave, compared to 11% of leavers. The poll doesn't appear to ask which way a new referendum would go and I can't find the detailed figures yet on the DeltaPoll website. However, what I can find is a similar poll by the same company, again for the Sun on Sunday, carried out a month ago which has quite different results.
If you look at page 13 of the earlier poll carried out on July 14th-18th (HERE) you can see the percentage of people who thought we should leave next year without a deal was 39% while 43% said we should delay Brexit if necessary. I am not even sure where the 55% figure comes from - presumably it's by adding the 8% who say they don't know to the 47% who say we should just leave.
Either way, we are talking about a very large and highly suspicious shift in opinion in a month. And bizarrely, when asked, 25% of the people polled didn't know if they had changed their mind on Brexit! This is quite amazing.
And buried at the bottom the story is two of the most significant details:
"There is also a split over whether leaving the EU will prove a historic mistake. Forty-four per cent think it will, 30 per cent believe it will not. One statement united 59 per cent of voters — “I’m really bored by Brexit.”
They voted for the impossible task, now they think it will be a historic mistake while entire focus and weight of government is on Brexit, at the expense of every other policy area, but 59% of voters are bored with it. And if we are to accept the results it means a majority of the British people want us to hurry up and get on with a historic mistake. It makes zero sense.
For me, this sums up Brexit.
I should add that DeltaPoll is a brand new company with no track record and using new techniques, pride themselves on being different. This is what they say about themselves:
Human behaviour is extremely complicated, often without
thought, sometimes mundane and regularly systematic. It can be explained by
repetition and need. Other times, it is driven by complex, random and entirely
unpredictable sets of decisions – an interaction of thoughts, experiences and
emotions that can be a catalyst for change.
Should we worry? Probably not. If the poll details are ever made public I'll have a look at them.
