Who is popular today?

A Cardiff University survey was open to wildly different interpretations
‘Most Leave voters… think violence towards MPs is a ‘price worth paying’ for Brexit.” “A majority of Remain voters… think protests in which members of the public are badly injured are a ‘price worth paying’ to stop Brexit.” So claimed a press release from Cardiff University about a Brexit opinion poll published last week. Professor Richard Wyn Jones, co-director of the survey, was “genuinely shocked” by the results. Newspapers inevitably picked up on that sentiment.
But look more closely at the poll. Respondents were told: “Some have suggested that leaving the European Union might present challenges to the UK but others disagree, labelling this as Project Fear.” They were then given a list of possibilities, ranging from “the break-up of the United Kingdom” to “violence directed towards members of parliament” and asked whether each was “a price worth paying”. A similar set of questions was posed about the consequences of stopping Brexit. Most people’s answers to these questions would be shaped, at least partly, by how likely they thought was a particular outcome. The poll shows that almost twice as many Leavers thought violence after Brexit was unlikely as thought it likely; barely half of Remainers thought that stopping Brexit would lead to violent protests (though more predicted violence against MPs). Continue reading...