Votes in favour of Britain to remain within the European Union (EU) have maintained an extremely slim lead over the Brexit camp as counting results poured in on Friday.
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The dramatic results come quick on the heels of several opinion polls released after voting ended at 10 p.m. London time.
The unofficial reports of high voter numbers appeared to rattle the official Vote Leave campaign with chief executive Matthew Elliott urging supporters asking them to help get out the vote.
Mr Elliott added: “If you don’t want people in London to force you and your family to stay in the European Union please email and call all your friends and make sure they vote Leave today”.
“On the basis of the data in hand, our clean-up process suggests a 2 percentage-point lead on average for “Remain” in the polls published this week, with around 9 percent of the vote undecided”, J.P. Morgan economist Malcolm Barr said in an email.
Joe Twyman, head of political and social research at YouGov said: “The results are close and it is too early to call it definitively”. The results will be announced only when all the areas have concluded their counts.
Sterling hit a new high for the year against the USA dollar during the day, advancing 1.6 per cent to $US1.495 before losing half its gains in late afternoon trade.
The markets reacted to the uncertainty with the pound surging as the polls closed last night, before falling dramatically. Sunderland is seen as a bellwether of whether the leave campaign has managed to sway a blue-collar demographic, according to the think tank Open Europe. The final announcement will bring to a close a fever-pitched and highly-strung campaign by both the Brexit and Remain sides. In a departure from the norm, no major broadcasters have commissioned any exit polls over concerns about accuracy following the fiasco of the last general elections, when a hung Parliament had been predicted wrongly instead of a big Conservative party majority.
World leaders and the City of London are all braced for the result which could rock global financial markets, change the shape of the continent and even spark a second Scottish independence referendum.
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The results will be collated and fed by local counting officers to regional counting officers in 12 electoral regions.
