The PH Demographic as shown in Brexit threads

[Kermit power]

Afternoon all,

First and foremost, please could people try to not turn this into just another actual Brexit thread?

On one of those other Brexit threads recently, someone posted up the YouGov survey findings below.....



This got me thinking about the typical PH - or at least NP&E - demographic.

If the findings are even remotely accurate, then even if every single member of PH was a Septuagenarian Tory thicko who never made it past CSEs, you'd expect probably 25-30% of contributors to Brexit threads to be Remain voters, yet this isn't the case!

Firstly, not every single PHer is a Septuagenarian Tory thicko. Overwhelmingly right of centre certainly, but far from uniformly old or stupid. There are plenty of people on here in their forties and younger with degree or higher levels of education.

This makes it all the more puzzling to me that despite a demographic which should probably throw up relatively balanced volumes of contributors to any Brexit thread, the reality is that they are all overwhelmingly populated by Leave voters to a far greater extent than any statistics suggest they should be.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why that would be? Equally importantly, is anyone able to discuss that without actually arguing about Brexit itself?

[Kermit power]

Rovinghawk said:

Kermit power said:

the reality is that they are all overwhelmingly populated by Leave voters to a far greater extent than any statistics suggest they should be.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why that would be?

Those who lost feel greater need to air their views than those that won.

So why is it that 95% or more of the contributors seem to be Leave voters, who won?

[Kermit power]

oyster said:

1. Your first line is completely inaccurate, even as a guess. The poll results you displayed would indicate that the proportion of Leave voters in the categories you mention, 70ish, Tory-voting and GCSE-limited education are respectively 64%, 61% and 70%. Unless there is some incredulous correlation between these, I would expect that the subset of people who belong to all 3 grouls to be a LOT smaller than 25-30%. More like 5%.

You're agreeing with me, although I'll admit I maybe could've worded the original post better!

I was suggesting that even if the PH population hit all three of those groups, then at least 20% or so of contributors should still have voted remain. Obviously not all PHers hit even two of those categories, and some don't even vote Tory, so there should, statistically speaking, be far more than just 20% of contributors favouring Remain.

oyster said:

2. Anyhow that aside, and back to PH demographics. One poll effect you've left out is living style. PH on the whole is non-metropolitan, which is obvious since it's a car site. Non-metropolitan residents voted far more in favour of Leave than metropolitan voters. I suspect this is the biggest demographic factor on PH.

I would've thought almost the complete opposite, so I've started a poll to try and find out! It'll be interesting to see what the results look like.

[Kermit power]

alfie2244 said:

Kermit power said:

So why is it that 95% or more of the contributors seem to be Leave voters, who won?

I would suggest it is because you are seeing what you want to see.......ironically it seems the complete opposite to me.

If you go and look at the majority of the Brexit threads on here, I think you'll see that whilst there are quite a large volume of posts favouring Remain, these actually come from a very small number of individual contributors, whereas there are far more actual people posting in favour of Leave, but with fewer posts each.

In most respects, much of the demographic on here has always struck me as being very similar to my own and my peers in the real world - middle class, reasonably well off financially, relatively right wing and even, in many cases, working in IT.

Of my real world peers in that demographic. I only know two people out of maybe a few dozen who voted Leave, which is why I'm so surprised that it seems so different on here.

[Kermit power]

wiggy001 said:

I was just scanning through the posts to say exactly this.

"Young people overwhelmingly voted to remain" is the oft told mantra. But that does depend on the definition of "old" and how you spin the figures. For example, if we listed every age from 18 to 100, most age groups voted to leave. If we say that people are either "young" or "old" then surely the cut off should be at the half way mark (call it 50)... how does that stat look?

It's like the argument that people will now vote remain because the old leavers have died off, ignoring the fact that the young remainers have now grown up into leavers.

But statistics are like a lamp post to a drunk...

I'm inclined to think that that is a "fact" which can be safely ignored.

If you're looking for somewhere to draw the line on young vs old, I'd be inclined to suggest people born before/after about 1950. Anyone born after then has no real adult recollection of life before the '73 referendum, which I would imagine might make quite a difference to your outlook on things.

I'm 48, and the reality is that I've never known life outside Europe. Why would the simple fact of getting older make me become progressively more in favour of leaving?