Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/161877 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 6438
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
On 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union. We analyze vote and turnout shares across 380 local authority areas in the United Kingdom. We find that exposure to the EU in terms of immigration and trade provides relatively little explanatory power for the referendum vote. Instead, we find that fundamental characteristics of the voting population were key drivers of the Vote Leave share, in particular their education profiles, their historical dependence on manufacturing employment as well as low income and high unemployment. At the much finer level of wards within cities, we find that areas with deprivation in terms of education, income and employment were more likely to vote Leave. Our results indicate that a higher turnout of younger voters, who were more likely to vote Remain, would not have overturned the referendum result.
Subjects: 
political economy
voting
referendum
migration
austerity
globalisation
UK
Scotland
EU
JEL: 
D72
N44
R23
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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