Brexit five-year anniversary polling – 23rd June 2021

New poll by Savanta ComRes to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the Brexit vote.

Remain with narrow lead if 2016 EU Referendum was re-run – Savanta ComRes Anniversary Poll

Headline 2016 EU Referendum re-run: Leave 49%; Remain 51%
Headline EU Membership VI: Become a member 49%; Not become a member 51%
Those who did not vote in 2016 more than twice as likely to favour Remain than Leave
Half (51%) say Brexit has made the country more divided, including 39% of Leavers

Remain would edge a narrow re-run of the 2016 EU Referendum according to a new poll by Savanta ComRes to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the Brexit vote.

The poll shows Remain beating Leave 51% to 49% if the 2016 referendum were held tomorrow, once those who are undecided have been removed.

However, there appears to be very little switching from either side since 2016, with 6% of Remainers now voting Leave, and 7% of Leavers now voting Remain, according to this poll.

That means the Remain edge in this poll comes from those who did not vote in 2016, with this group being more than twice as likely to vote for Remain (71%) than Leave (29%).

If the referendum question were different, and the UK public were faced with the choice to become a member of the EU or not, the results are reversed, with 51% in this poll saying they’d vote to not become a member, while 49% would become a member.

In addition to those who did not vote in 2016 breaking once again in favour of membership, this reversal also comes down to 14% of 2016 Remainers who would not vote to rejoin, compared to just 10% of 2016 Leavers who would now vote to become a member of the EU.

The divisions caused by the Brexit vote are clear in this poll, with a third of respondents each saying that Brexit has been a success (31%) and failure (34%). One in ten (10%) Leavers say that Brexit has been a failure, while 14% of Remainers say that Brexit has been a success.

One thing that the public can agree on, though, is that Brexit has caused a more divided country, with 51% saying that Brexit has made the country more divided compared to just 13% who say that it has made the country more united. Two in five (39%) Leavers say that the Brexit legacy is a more divided country.

Commenting on the findings, Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta ComRes says,

“On the five year anniversary of the Brexit vote this poll shows a country just as divided as it was during the campaign, with a re-run of the referendum on a knife-edge according to this voting intention, and the opportunity to rejoin being favoured by a majority of those who voted Remain in 2016, rather than ‘accepting’ the 2016 vote and moving on.

However, if either of these questions were to be put to the British people again, those who did not vote in 2016 look to be a key source of Remain/Rejoin support, and there are always likely to be sceptics regarding whether such potential voters would even turn out in any future vote, and therefore those still in favour of Remaining or Rejoining would need to do much more to convince Leavers that they’d made the wrong decision in 2016, rather than relying on those who did not vote last time to turn out.”

Date Published: 23/06/2021

Categories: Politics | Public and communities | UK

Client: Savanta ComRes

Methodology

Savanta ComRes interviewed 2,191 UK adults aged 18+ on 18 – 20 June 2021. Data were weighted by age, sex, region and SEG, as well as by the results of the 2016 EU Referendum and 2019 General Election. Savanta ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules