A lot has been written about a “Divided Britain” in the wake of the Brexit vote – about sharp schisms of opinion between the young and the old, the Middle-Class and the Working-Class, the Financially Stable and the Financially Precarious, the Highly-educated and the Poorly-educated etc. There is definitely truth inasmuch as the Polling data definitely points towards such.
However, taking the differing turnout rates – in as much as we can estimate them – throws up a more nuanced picture.
For instance – looking at data for both likelihood to vote and voting intention amongst potential voters of differing Age groups – it seems likely that the proportion of older potential voters (55+) that voted REMAIN (about 31%) was actually not that far behind the number of young voters (18-34) who voted REMAIN (about 37%).
The real difference is that the majority of the rest of the older potential voters group voted LEAVE, while the majority of the rest of the younger potential voters simply did not vote.
In fact, it’s quite possible that the 37% REMAIN vote amongst younger voters was even lower – three of the five polls ending on the 22nd June had figures of between 77% and 79% for those “Absolutely Certain To Vote” while the actual turnout figure was 72%.It is not unreasonable to assume that this disparity between stated certainty and actually voting was higher amongst younger voters – particularly given that two of the above five polls mentioned above asked potential voters were they certain that they were registered to vote and found that while over 95% of voters over 65 were certain, less than three-quarters of 18-24 year olds were.
So what would have happened if there had been uniform turnout amongst all age-groups? The answer is probably not much. It has to be remembered that the putative 60% turnout for those aged 18-24 is a very high turnout figure for that age-group, even if it does lag behind the turnout figure for older voters. The result probably would have been a 1-point shift to REMAIN leading to a LEAVE 51 REMAIN 49 final scoreline.