MORE than one third of SNP supporters voted for Britain to leave the European Union, new research suggests today.
A report by the National Centre for Social Research[NatCen] said the snapshot of 1,391 people between September 22 and October 24 showed the same proportion, 36 per cent, of Nationalist supporters as Labour voters voted for Leave.
It also said all parties with the exception of Ukip saw a "significant" proportion of their backers vote against their leaders' advice. Even 26 per cent of supporters of the pro-European Liberal Democrats voted Leave, it claimed.
The NatCen research pointed to a victory for Brexit on June 23 because the Leave campaign had been able to galvanise voters who had become disengaged from politics and did not turn out to vote at general elections.
Among them was a big group of "economically deprived and anti-immigration" voters who made up 12 per cent of the population and voted in large numbers for withdrawal from the EU.
The research also identified a move away from left-right politics in the referendum with voters dividing between socially liberal Remainers and socially conservative Leavers rather than along party lines.
It found that 54 per cent of people who did not vote in the 2015 General Election cast a ballot in the June 23 poll with six out of 10 of this group voting Leave. The Brexit campaign also won "significant" support among those who had no interest in politics, 80 per cent, or not very much, 56 per cent.
Labour’s Chuka Umunna, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration, said the Remain campaign's heavy reliance on economic arguments "was not going to work when so many middle and lower-income families already felt the economy was not working for them".
He added: "For many areas, immigration was the significant issue.”
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