The market and currency woes come after three opinion polls on the European Union referendum put the leave campaign in the lead, while the Sun newspaper came out in favour of Brexit. 3 The most recent example is the Scottish referendum on independence (2014) where an average of the polls showed a lead for voting for “Yes” for independence under two weeks before the vote.
Advertisement
The bookmakers are also reporting a flood of bets backing Leave over that past 48 hours.
The referendum jitters have spread to markets worldwide as share prices dropped sharply ahead of the European Union referendum, with falls compounded as oil prices fell once more and amid renewed concerns over the global economy.
The firm revealed that over the previous two-day period, just one in ten bets taken have backed the David Cameron-led Remain campaign.
Brexit has dominated the market since late past year, driving a trade-weighted decline of more than 10 percent in sterling since late November. ORB found that 78 per cent of Leave supporters say they will definitely vote – describing themselves as a “10” on a scale of 0-10, while only 66 per cent of Remain supporters say the same.
Its “roadmap”, drawn up by leading Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, sets out six new laws the “Leave” campaign intends to enact by 2020.
The leave camp boast an even bigger lead according to a YouGov survey for The Times, which puts them on 46% support versus 39% for remain, with 15% undecided.
For months, No10 and Labour HQ took heart from the fact that while internet polls were pointing to a close race, more traditional phone polls tended to show a double-digit lead for Remain.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s mass-circulation Sun newspaper called in its Tuesday edition on readers to vote to quit the 28-member EU.
The pound fell to its lowest level since April on Friday after one poll suggested that the “Leave” campaign was 10 points ahead.
“A vote to Leave on 23 June is a vote for action, and the Government will need to respond quickly”.
The piece derides as “nonsense” the warnings from a flurry of institutions – including the Bank of England and International Monetary Fund – that Brexit would damage the UK’s economy. What’s changing this week (apart from the FX options market being pretty much untradeable unless you want to bet on “remain”) is that the very near-term outlook around the vote is now more symmetrical. And not just in Britain, either.
Advertisement
Polling companies were burned by their failure to predict last year’s general election result, and a year-long inquiry into their problems found the issues would be hard to fix.
