With the Brexit referendum Britain has spoken or has it

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the Brexit referendum results, arguing that the statistical interpretation and lack of clear thresholds undermine the legitimacy of the declared outcome.

Contribution

It highlights fundamental statistical issues in the Brexit referendum process and emphasizes the importance of proper data interpretation and predefined decision criteria.

Findings

The referendum data was misrepresented due to improper statistical summarization.

Lack of clear thresholds for decision-making undermines result legitimacy.

Proper planning could have ensured more accepted and transparent outcomes.

Abstract

The Brexit referendum on the United Kingdom membership of the European Union took place on 23 June 2016. On the basis of a 52-48 split, statements such as: the majority of the UK chose to leave the EU, or the British people have voted to leave the European Union, or the will of the British people is to leave the EU, have pervaded political discourse and newspaper articles. In a recent paper, the authors present scientific arguments to contend that all those statements are without basis. They point out the fundamental issues with the Brexit referendum, which lie in how the data was summarized, ignoring fundamental statistical principles, and in the lack of terms of reference fixing a threshold for the result and for the minimum turnout. If carefully planned, the actual division of the United Kingdom would have been properly captured and the result---either way, for Leave or Remain---would have been readily accepted. In the present paper, the authors summarize the discussion and add some context in non-technical terms.