The European elections were always going to be interesting if nothing else. We’ve put lots of stats together so you can see them in a different way.
One thing is for sure – this particular vote proved only one thing – the nation cannot decide on Brexit – and that, if anything, is the takeaway message. However, everyone has a different view and position, so here are some interesting numbers.
Here are the 2016 EU referendum results in Britain on a simple question of Leave or Remain:
- LEAVE 17,410,742 or 51.89%
- REMAIN 16,141,241 or 48.11%
- Total votes 33,577,342
- Registered voters 46,500,001
- Voter turnout 72,21%
What is surprising in last weeks European elections is that given the raised passions for one side or the other, voter turnout completely collapsed from the 72.2 per cent turnout at the original 2016 UK EU referendum but remained more or less stable for the last 4 EU elections.
The chart below shows the percentage of registered UK voters who actually voted at European Parliament elections from 1979–2019, and the average turnout across the European Union.
Chart by UK Political Info
Although the Brexit party have claimed a decisive victory – and to be fair, for a single party, it was – it depends on what you are looking for in the numbers. Given the political parties position on Brexit – this is how it turned by pro/anti-Brexit votes.
The chart below shows how the Brexit Party topped polls in every country or region apart from London, which was won by the Liberal Democrats; Scotland, which was won by the SNP; and Northern Ireland, where they did not stand.
From a mapping perspective – the result seems overwhelming.
Map – BBC UK Politics
There is another side of the story though
But the maps and numbers don’t tell the whole story. There are a number of ways of looking at this result.
From here, even after looking at the maps and basic numbers – the actual statistics demonstrate only one thing (depending on your view of course) – that there is no unambiguous majority for anything when it comes to Brexit.
It was the Tories worst election result since 1832.
It was Labour’s worse share of the vote in 100 years.
SNP has a 23% increase in the percentage of votes cast over the last EU election. The result is inevitable at some point – Scotland will be leaving the union if England leaves the EU, quite possibly irrespective of what Westminster ends up doing.
6,085,174 people signed the petition to revoke article 50 a few months ago. It took three weeks to reach 6 million. Politically and in the mainstream media, nobody took any notice. Last week, 5,248,533 people voted for the Brexit Party. For the mainstream media, this 6-week old party must be followed unquestioningly on TV screens and front pages.
In 2016 17.4m people voted for Brexit. In 2019 5.2m people voted for the Brexit Party.
In contrast – According to Electoral Calculus, if last week’s vote had been a general election, the result would be:
- Conservative: 0 seats
- Labour: 93 seats
- Lib: 31 seats
- Green: 1 seat
- SNP: 56 seats
- Plaid: 5 seats
- Brexit: 446 seats
- Brexit majority 242!
And finally ….
Whilst we all fixate on Brexit it should be noted that Child homelessness has surged by 80 per cent since the Conservatives came into government in 2010, with a new household now found to be homeless every five minutes, official figures show. It’s a rise of 33 per cent in the last four years. There has been a 267 per cent rise in children living in B&B between 2010 and 2018. The number of young people who have been in B&Bs for more than six weeks is up by 440 per cent in the same period
Unfortunately, whilst Brexit sucks the life out traditional politics, millions are suffering and rapidly rising child poverty is a legacy the entire nation should be ashamed of in modern Britain.
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Featured image is from TP
