We offered our readers a varied menu, including the kicking-in of purdah, George Osborne’s “punishment budget”, and Jeremy Corbyn’s faliure to campaign all-out for EU membership.
36 per cent of them plumped for David Cameron’s renegotiation. This is the wisdom of crowds. If Cameron had pulled off some immigration control on EU numbers, however slight, I believe he would have pulled the referendum off. But he didn’t – and was never going to, given the four pillars and where the EU is on them (and on Britain). Technically, I suppose the renegotiation took place before the campaign proper. But the campaign proper was not the campaign whole.
I would have rated Corbyn’s deliberate lack of effort almost as highly – it was natural Labour voters that swung the result – and the onset of purdah almost as highly as that. But vox populi, vox dei.
Here are the rest of the figures:
Since you ask, there was no settled view on “other”, though there was an impressive grasp of bits of detail, including “David Davis analysis at ICE”, “Bob Geldof’s sneering flotilla” and “Dominic Cummings not being sacked”. A bit of “Boris and Gove joining the Leave campaign” too.
950 or so party member responses is a very healthy response rate, indicating that the survey got the readers going.