Friday 24 June 2016

Brexit vote - ongoing coverage

I shall add to this as things become clearer



The All-Night Nailbiter: Results Come In And Suddenly Everything Turns Around, Serling Tumble


Update 7:20 PM  The Sunderland results are in and it's a Leave tsunami with Leave sweeping it away:
  • Remain: 51,930, or 39%
     
  • Leave 82,394, or 69%
On the news sterling just imploded:
* * *
Update 7:13 PM: Suddenly Leave odds are surging
And just like that, Leave's odds have more than doubled:
Update 7:00 PM: And a shocker already from Newcastle. As we noted earlier, Newcastle was supposed to have a comfortable 12 point leads for Remain. However, moments ago the official results came out and while Remain did in fact vote for Remain, it won by the smallest possible margin with 51% voting to Remain and 49% voting to Leave, or 65,404 REMAIN vs 63,598 LEAVE.
As noted, this was a far smaller victory than expected, and as a result Sterling has tumbled nearly 200 pips from the session highs, and has wiped out all intraday gains.
* * *
Until this point, it was all polling, hearsay, speculation and rumors. Now, we finally have the first official results. We will update this post with incremental data as long as a clear picture emerges.
The first official result, Gibraltar, has been a whopping victory for Remain with 19,322 voting to Remain and only 823 to leave.
Some additional details from the BBC:
However a small hiccup may have emerged in the expected Bremain steamrolling, when moments ago the BBC said that Newcastle is shaping up as a marginal win for Remain, which as BBC adds appears to be worse than expected based on initial polls which had suggested a far stronger showing for Remain.
And the biggest surprise: moments ago Opinium may have flipped everything on its head when moments ago it reported that Leave is 45% and Remain is 44%:
Sterling has lost 100 pips on the news, and ES was now only up 4.5 on the session.

Is there a ban on [Br]exit polling today?



23 June, 2016


The official story is that the referendum taking place in the UK today will not have exit polls, which are banned.

As The Telegraph points out, however, YouGov is carrying out on-the-day polling and will release its results at 10:00 PM local British time. Here’s the explanation from The Telegraph:

Will there be an exit poll?

Technically, no. An exit poll is conducted on a large scale outside polling stations but broadcasters have no way of knowing how accurate an exit poll would be as the last result they have to compare it to is the 1974 referendum. However, pollsters YouGov will be running an on-the-day poll on June 23, the results of which will be announced at 10pm, once voting has closed. 

If you’re curious as to who YouGov is, here are the opening paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on them:

YouGov is an international internet-based market research firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.[2]

YouGov was founded in the UK in May 2000 by Stephan Shakespeare and Nadhim Zahawi. In April 2005, YouGov became a public company listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.[3]
Stephan Shakespeare has been YouGov’s Chief Executive Officer since 2010.[4]Roger Parry has been YouGov’s Chairman since 2007. [5] Political commentator Peter Kellner was YouGov’s President until he stepped down in 2016. [6]

YouGov is a member of the British Polling Council.[7]

For those too busy to use the links above, here’s the basic information on YouGov’s founder Stephen Shakespeare (real name Stephan Kukowski, born in Germany of a German father who was the press liaison officer for the British Army of the Rhine; Kukowski took his present surname on marrying Rosamund Shakespeare), again fromWikipedia:

In 2012, Shakespeare was appointed as Chairman of the Data Strategy Board (DSB), the advisory body that was set up by the government to maximise value of data for users across the UK.[1] In October 2012, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Cabinet Office ministers announced that he would lead an independent review of Public Sector Information; the “Shakespeare Review: an Independent Review of Public Sector Information” was published in 2013.[2] He is currently a member of the Government’s Public Sector Transparency Board[3] and a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, London.[4]

He is the former owner of the websites ConservativeHome (now owned by Lord Ashcroft) and PoliticsHome (now owned by Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd) which he launched in April 2008 after closing down his Internet television channel 18 Doughty Street.

He was named one of the Top 20 Most Influential People in Politics in the Debrett’s 500 2015.[5]

With YouGov doing its on-the-day polling, it’s impossible to know where exactly they’re  doing their surveys, which of course makes this much harder to pin down than a genuine exit poll.

Instead of a properly run exit poll, on the day of the referendum which is to decide its political future, the UK public is being fed information from a survey carried out by a company founded by a German-born Conservative who sits on a number of government boards and whose company is conducting an in effect unofficial poll the details of which cannot be tracked.

Isn’t EU-style democracy a lovely thing indeed?

Farage Denies Conceding: "We Haven't Had A Single Bloody Vote Counted"; S&P Futures Surge



In a twist worthy of a soap opera, just minutes after Sky and the major newswires reported that Nigel Farage said "looks like Remain will edge it", a Nigel Farage spokesman told Bloomberg that "he never conceded. He looked at the prevailing weather and was honest. We're not saying it's over. We haven't had a single bloody vote counted", even as just moments later, wires reported that Nigel Farage told the Press Association he thinks Britain has voted to stay in the European Union based on “what I know from some of my friends in the financial markets who have done some big polling”. 

In any event, and Farage is quite right about this - without a single vote counted - the suspense over Brexit appears over, and reopening S&P futs were spiked 13 points higher, hitting 2,119 and less than 1% from all time highs.
Cable likewise jumped and rose above 1.15 moments ago...
.. although it has since trimmed some of its gains and was back under 1.15 at last check. As Bloomberg adds, leveraged accounts that bought GBP just after U.K. polls closed have trimmed positions after a post-voting survey sent the currency higher, according to an Asia-based FX trader.

BBC


After results in 15 counting areas out of 382, Remain was on 48.5% and Leave on 51.5%, with Leave doing well in the North-East of England and Remain ahead in Scotland.



Unlike at a general election the results in individual areas do not count - it is the overall number of votes cast for one side or the other across the country that will determine the outcome.

Polling expert Prof John Curtice said at this very early stage Leave looked favourite to win the referendum. He estimates that the finishing post for one side to win is 16,813,000 votes.

The pound surged against the dollar when polls closed at 22:00 BST and opinion polls pointed towards a Remain win but it fell dramatically when the first results were declared.

Votes are being counted at each of the 382 local counting areas. These represent all 380 local government areas in England, Scotland and Wales, plus one each for Northern Ireland and Gibraltar.

Results from these areas will then be declared throughout the night, along with result totals from 11 nations and regions.

Jenny Watson, chief counting officer, will announce the referendum result at Manchester Town Hall after all 382 local totals have been certified and declared.

Gibraltar was the first to declare a result with 96% of voters in the British overseas territory backing Remain. A big Remain win had been predicted in Gibraltar amid concerns about its border with Spain.

Leave won by 22% in Sunderland, but Remain edged it in neighbouring Newcastle but by a tighter margin than expected, in two of the first results to declare.

According to Prof Curtice, the Remain vote is about 10% short of what was expected in the North-East of England and although Remain is ahead in Scotland, turnout is lower than in the rest of the UK.

Wales appears to be leaning towards Brexit, with a vote of 54.9% for Leave after four voting areas had declared.

Northern Ireland, with five constituencies declared so far, is voting in favour of Remain.

There are no results so far from the Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber or London and South East of England, where voting was disrupted by flash flooding.


An online survey taken on polling day of 5,000 people by YouGov suggests the Remain side running at 52% of the vote, to Leave's 48%. Ipsos Mori have released polling from Thursday and Wednesday suggesting Remain will get 54% and Leave 46%.

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage told the Press Association the Remain camp had won based on "what I know from some of my friends in the financial markets who have done some big polling".

In a speech to supporters in London, Mr Farage - whose political career has been built on campaigning to get the UK out of the EU - said his "sense" was that the UK had voted to Remain.



He told the cheering crowd he hoped he was wrong but added: "Win or lose this battle, we will win this war, we will get this country back."

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