Thanks for your response which was appreciated. However, I would like to make a few clarifying comments.
First, ‘What UK Thinks’ is provided by the long-established National Centre for Social Research. It has tracked British attitudes to the EU since February 2012 using 75 YouGov polls. This most certainly is not a ‘casual survey’. See:
Secondly, the EU Referendum in June 2016 was both flawed in its design and subject to fraud in its execution. In the case of the former, the franchise was too narrow as many UK citizens living in the EU were unable to vote and the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 had set a precedent for the voting age to be lowered to 16. In the case of the latter, both Vote Leave and Leave.EU significantly spent over the legal limit in their campaigning and have been non-punitively fined. Moreover, there is now a substantial body of evidence that voters were provided with seriously misleading information courtesy of the obfuscatory placement policies of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.
Thirdly, the word ‘lie’ includes the idea of dissimulation. Both the Conservative and Labour leadership are engaging in that deceit. The UK has absolutely no future unless it can move on from that dissimulation that has blighted its recent politics.
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@iankenway I am not disagreeing with your assertion that the original vote was flawed. There are many reasons to criticize it.
But to call someone a liar for making an assertion over a public vote because of a not-so-casual poll is an unfair accusation all the same.
@iankenway The most important thing to remember is that a poll, no matter how professionally done, will not reflect the voting public perfectly, sometimes not at all, even if a poll isnt flawed.
The reason for this is because voters seek out the oppertunity to vote. They make a choice to take time out of their day, go to a location, and vote.
A poll is the opposite, those taking the poll seek you out. So it tends to include a random sampling of not just the people who care enough to vote, but also the people who never tend to vote, or simply cant be bothered to vote on this issue
It is why any sort of publicly held vote is, if all else is equal at least, much more meaningful than any survery/poll.
@freemo Once again thank you for your thoughtful comments. I think I may respond further, but I'm really busy for the next few days.
@iankenway No worries and no rush.
@freemo A few days turned into a month plus. Local , regional and EU ekections here in Greece.plus a looming Legislative (General) Election next month. Plus all the nonsense back in the UK. Elections v opinion polls is a really important subject and I promise to come back to the subject as soon as I can! Ciao IMK
@iankenway It happens :)
@iankenway I'm not sure a casual survey outweighs an official national vote. While that **may** be true it is hardly a lie to cite the sentiments on a national vote, though it is a good reason to encourage a revote.