Referendum: webteam's votes and forecast

When the four-strong webteam met to discuss how AudlemOnline should handle the EU Referendum, one brave soul suggested that, like Britain's newspapers, we should say how we, as individuals, planned to vote.

Now, if the pollsters are to be believed – and why should they be after their General Election performance last year – the webteam should be split with two for in and two for out. Would we reflect the national position, we wondered.

The majority of us on the webteam then revealed we had already voted as we had postal votes – so there was no changing our minds at the last minute.

First up was the editor who, as normal, told a story, rather interestingly for a change, about how he had put an enormous amount of effort in 1972 into ensuring his first-born child arrived on 1st January 1973, the day Britain joined the then Common Market. His son duly arrived on that very day, a Eurobabe. Mischievously, he added that his son had reminded him recently that as he had not pulled out then he was hardly likely to vote to pull out now!

There was a second and more serious argument, he added, for being in the Remain camp. Europe could well collapse in the coming year with the Euro and the Migration crises splitting the Union irrevocably. The last thing Britain wants is to be blamed for the end of a noble, if not particularly successful enterprise, and if we leave, and the EU does unravel, we will take the rap, That would make us European political pariahs for a generation or more.

In addition, even though it was down to many factors as well as the EU, he said he had gone through a lifetime without a major European war. Yes, there are problems with the EU, as there are with Democracy and much else in life, but why break off a relationship that has brought much that's good, including a stable Europe, for a very long time.

As the discussion swirled around, our most left-leaning member said he saw the EU as a bulwark against the over-reaching clout of the Multinationals, mainly American companies. We need a massive trading and legal bloc such as the EU to take them on and prevent them taking over our lives increasingly. Curiously, that argument attracted sympathy from all.

The Free Market was the key for another member of the team, in helping to ensure a strong economy for the UK. Access to a 500million trading area was vital in ensuring our economy could fund the NHS and Welfare needs. Whilst Brexit would still enable the UK to trade with Europe it would inevitably be under less favourable terms than currently exist.

However, he added, we should continue to resist trends to become a European state rather than a Trading area.

And just in case you now think our discussion was getting a trifle too responsible and serious – and honestly, we did take it seriously – our fourth member, who in fairness rarely travels further than Buerton, felt that the UK economy could well prosper in either scenario. For him, the vote was more about rejecting distrust and isolationism in favour of a forward-looking connected world.

So, we ended up with what we least expected, unanimity. Four votes for Remain and not a single Brexiter amongst us.

Referendum Result Forecast

Time, we thought, irrespective of our views, to consult the AudlemOnline Psephology Department and ask for their scientific analysis of voting intentions so we could publish the website's considered forecast of the exact Referendum result.

Their analysis took into account the following:

• The trending pattern of all national opinion polls over the past 28 days
• A consultant psychologist's analysis of the differing levels of passion amongst Remain and Leave supporters
• The likely propensity to vote by age, sex, gender self-identification and ethnicity
• The reputations and credibility of the leaders of the Leave and Remain camps
• The views of North of England, South Wales and Stoke on Trent working class voters and their disillusionment with the Labour Party's current leadership
• The views of Conservative readers of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Sun and those newspapers' views on the Referendum and the Conservative Party's leadership
• past world-wide Referenda tendencies for a swing to the Status Quo in the final days
• The influence of the past week's AudlemOnline Referendum articles
• The head of the Psephology Department's gut feeling and personal prejudice.

All this was expressed in the formula seen on the Psephology Department's blackboard to the right which we took a quick photo of:

The formula, which despite appearances is Relatively simple, produced a very definite result:

• 53.67% to Vote nationally to Leave
• 46.33% to Remain.

We decided to still publish our views in the hope, in defiance of our official result forecast, that the UK will vote to Remain and we can run a 1992 Sun-style headline – and one that will be just as misleading – that "It Woz Us Wot Won It."

And if by chance our Psephologists have it right, we can also gloat "We told you so."

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.