UPDATED: Promising early signs from European elections turnout figures
Two different cuts of the early turnout data, both leading to the same conclusion: turnout in the European Parliament elections is up by more the greater the Remain vote was in the area.
Change in turnout from last euros – against Remain % from 2016
40 councils so far in pic.twitter.com/AoyQ0Xfkqk— Patrick Heneghan (@PJHeneghan) May 24, 2019
2019 EP turnout for 29 local authorities. For now there seems to be a clear trend: larger increases in turnout between 2014 and 2019 in areas where Remain did better. Please let me know if you have more data points. pic.twitter.com/7i2kciZcf2
— Leonardo Carella (@leonardocarella) May 24, 2019
Overall, Remain voting areas are seeing higher turnout as well. But that’s less revealing as they usually do. What’s revealing is that the turnout gap seems to have increased this time.
More promising signs too when turnout changes are compared with party support, in particular for the Lib Dems who are currently also seeing a membership surge.
A similar pattern is in evidence for strong Lib Dem areas – the more votes the Lib Dems took in 2014, the more turnout is up at #EP2019 pic.twitter.com/dS5OxkXSQr
— Number Cruncher Politics UK (@NCPoliticsUK) May 25, 2019
UPDATE: My results coverage for the European elections is here.
Using the 55 areas results (no central London, Scotland or Northern Ireland) a get a pretty strong positive correlation (66.6%) between turnout yesterday (T) and % remain in 2016 (R). The formula is:
T = 0.4729R + 15.715
Next thing is to estimate the probability of a remainer voting vs a leaver voting!