The Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent

ABSTRACT

The outcome of the British referendum on European Union (EU) membership sent shockwaves through Europe. While Britain is an outlier when it comes to the strength of Euroscepticism, the anti-immigration and anti-establishment sentiments that produced the referendum outcome are gaining strength across Europe. Analysing campaign and survey data, this article shows that the divide between winners and losers of globalization was a key driver of the vote. Favouring British EU exit, or ‘Brexit’, was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism. While there is no evidence of a short-term contagion effect with similar membership referendums in other countries, the Brexit vote nonetheless poses a serious challenge to the political establishment across Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• Britain
• Euroscepticism
• populism
• referendum
• voting behaviour

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of JEPP for valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sara B. Hobolt is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is vice-chair of the European Election Studies.

Notes

1. There is one precedent to the Brexit vote. In 1982, Greenland, part of Denmark, voted by 52 per cent to secede from the EEC, but Denmark remained within the EEC. That referendum had limited consequences for the EU as a whole, given Greenland's small population and its relationship to Denmark.

2. There were also other campaigning groups notably on the Leave side, such Leave.EU and Grassroots Out with clear anti-immigration and anti-establishment messages.

3. Wave 7 was conducted online by the survey organization YouGov between 14th April 2016 and 4th May 2016 (Fieldhouse et al. 2016).

4. The respondents were asked: ‘How does the financial situation of your household now compare with what it was 12 months ago?’

5. Respondents were asked to place themselves on seven-point scales in terms of the strength of their ‘Europeanesss’, ‘Britishness’ and ‘Englishness’.

6. ‘And if there were a UK General Election tomorrow, which party would you vote for?’

7. The cumulative scale (with an alpha scalability score of 0.84) consists of responses to the following five items: ‘The politicians in the UK Parliament need to follow the will of the people’; ‘The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions’; ‘I would rather be represented by a citizen than by a specialized politician’; ‘Elected officials talk too much and take too little action’; and ‘What people call ‘compromise’ in politics is really just selling out on one's principles’.

8. ‘How much trust do you have in Members of Parliament in general?’

9. ‘Do you approve or disapprove of the job that each of the UK government is doing?’

Additional information

Funding

I am grateful to the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust (SG153370) for financial support.