European Policy Analysis
institutions is close to the EU average , and actually has improved between fall 2015 and spring 2016 before the referendum . What such data insinuates is a strong loss of output legitimacy of political institutions , abroad and at home . Distrust does not imply that citizens across the EU would want to leave the EU . This is only a necessary condition . It needed the steep rise of an extreme EU-hating party like UKIP and a strong contingent of parliamentarians within the ruling party to encourage PM Cameron to make an internal party conflict to a national issue ( Jennings and Stoker 2016 ). It helped his case that the EU Commission , due to unfortunate policy decisions taken in the course of the Eurozone crises , became more and more the preferred scapegoat across the EU , in the UK as well as in other corners of the EU . Given the policy approaches of the Commission and even more so of the Council , there are plenty of good reasons to take a critical stance toward the whole project of European integration . And yet , the referendum was not so much about the real policies of the EU than about perceptions of EU policies as well as about economic situations that were mainly the result of domestic policy actions since the global financial crisis in 2008 .
The leave votes came from those with quite distinct socio-economic features . First , the older the voter , the more he / she opted to leave . Second , this feature goes hand in hand with the level of education , where data shows that younger voters who have higher educational qualifications tended to opt to stay . This implies that older people with relatively lower education levels opted to leave . Third , leave votes are significantly related to the level of the poverty rate , i . e . the higher the poverty rate in a local authority , the higher the share of leave votes . A similar statistical significance holds true for the impact of income inequality in the region , i . e . the higher the level of income inequality , the higher the share of leave votes . Fourth , disposable household income was no driving variable for a leave vote but then the level of employment in a given local authority was a factor : When those units were controlled for student numbers then data show that the higher the employment rate the lower the leave share was . Fifth , political geography has been critical , given that London , Scotland , and Northern Ireland came out with a clear majority of remain votes . Provincial backwaters on average tended to opt for leave ; while more globally integrated parts of England and distinct political entities ( Scotland , Northern Ireland ) opted for stay ( Darvas 2016 ).
It may be an exaggeration to argue that the leave camp consists of only the “ left behind ” voters . Post-referendum voter data and voter questionnaires indicate that political – cultural factors also played a role for voting behavior . In other words , being in favor of a standalone Britain goes beyond pure economic reasons . The leave campaigners may have used all the tricks of the trade , and never hesitated to bend facts and to operate with open lies , but then all this would have been of no avail if there had not have been a sentiment on the side of critical voters who acted as a proper sounding board for the spin doctors of the leave camp . It is well known that it does not take a large number of foreigners in a region or a city for the majority to support and express
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