WhatUKthinks have published another poll, the 45th, in the series (HERE) asking: In hindsight was the UK right or wrong to vote to leave the EU. Once again I'm glad to say WRONG is well ahead. If you've been watching these, you will know in the first 33 up to the middle of May this year, RIGHT was ahead 26 times. WRONG was in front just once. After May though the polls began to change and in the 12 carried out since 25th May RIGHT has been ahead in only one, on 16th July. WRONG has been ahead in seven polls and decisively so in the last two.
Public opinion is a bit like a super tanker. It takes a long time to turn. There is huge momentum. A lot of it concerns attitude and this is always the most difficult thing to change, and for some people their attitude to the EU will never shift. But at the margin, and perhaps a good bit beyond, where people made their decision last year as some apparently did, on the way to the polling booth (amazing but true) there must be doubt starting to creep in. Plus the demographic change as elderly pro leave voters die and are replaced by younger, more eurocentric ones.
Whatever is happening, it seems to me that public opinion is starting to see the massive problems ahead and are beginning to have a change of heart. Will the government be able to resist calls for another referendum? I don't believe so.
Professor John Curtice (HERE) reviewed these recent results a day or two ago, before the last poll mentioned above, and he seems to cautiously conclude there is a slight shift to remain. The WhatUKthinks series are based on YouGov polling but Professor Curtice also notes:
There is also some corroboration for this apparent a slight tilt away from Leave from one other company, BMG Research. It recently released the results of regular monthly readings that it had taken since November of last year of how people would vote now in response to the question that appeared on the referendum ballot paper (readings that had not previously been published). In the three polls BMG conducted at the beginning of this year, on average 45% said they would vote for Remain, 46% for Leave. In the company’s three most recent polls, the equivalent figures have been Remain 46%, Leave 44%.
I expect the trend to continue. The real problems have not even started yet.
