Britain turns Remain today as more elderly Leavers die, survey claims

Today is the day Britain turns Remain as more EU-loving youngsters reach voting age and elderly Leavers pass away, a survey has claimed.

The study found that even if nobody changed how they voted in the 2016 referendum, the demographic shift over the last two and a half years will have supposedly changed in Remain’s favour on January 19.

Former YouGov president Peter Kellner conducted the survey for the People’s Vote campaign, which is pushing for a second referendum.

‘Polling research has shown consistently that elderly voters backed Brexit in the referendum by two-to-one,’ Kellner wrote in The Independent. ‘We also know that they turned out to vote in larger-than-average numbers.

‘If we assume a turnout of 80% among people who have since died, then each year the number of voters who die is around 480,000; applying the two-to-one Leave-Remain ratio, we can estimate that 320,000 pro-Brexit voters and 160,000 pro-EU voters die each year.’

The survey claimed Leave’s winning majority of 1,269,501 votes has been shrinking by approximately 1,350 a day since the referendum on June 23 2016.

That calculates a loss of almost half a million votes a year. It also showed that by March 29, when the UK is due to leave the EU, the Remain majority would supposedly be almost 100,000.

The survey provoked fierce debate this week as Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee used the findings to call on Parliament to force a second referendum.

Piers Morgan hit back at Toynbee and the survey, writing on Twitter: ‘Those “old leavers” were British people who exercised their democratic right to vote & assumed the decision of the Referendum would be honoured.

‘For you to dismiss them in such a disgustingly callous manner is an absolute disgrace. Delete this.’

Official figures for the Brexit vote put the number of Leave votes at 17,410,742 – 51.89%. This is compared to 16,141,241 to stay – 48.11%.

However, there was a clear generational split between the voters.

The under 25s were twice as likely to vote Remain (71%) compared to the over 65s (36%).

The 25-49 year old group narrowly voted Remain (54%) compared to 40% of the 50-64 year old category.

By the time the UK leaves the EU on March 29, there will be another 2,000,000 more young people eligible to vote.

Based on the demographic change, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) recently estimated a 52%-48% vote for Remain in 2021 and 54%-46% by 2026.