First, an update on this post as it seems that some of the figures originally quoted were not accurate. The following figures are taken from the Office of National Statistics.
17.4 million voted to Leave.
16.2 million voted to Remain.
Note that an unknown number of voters decided to make a protest vote, assuming that the overall result would be Remain.
The voting population at that time was 56.1 million. That means that:
31% voted to Leave
28.9% voted to Remain.
40.1% did not vote.
Possible reasons for not voting:
- Not registered to vote (especially young voters who typically move address fairly often and don't get round to registering every time they move).
- Anyone with literacy problems.
- Those who don't vote in elections as they think their vote isn't going to count due to first past the post system.
- Those who are uninterested in politics/elections.
Remain voters were more likely to be young, and would be the ones to face the result of leaving the EU.
In 2016/17
- 1.45 million young people were aged between 16 and 17, who would now (2019) be able to vote.
- 1.05 million deaths, predominantly the elderly.
Original post below, not that these figures were not accurate, see text above.
The official House of Commons analysis can be found at http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7639
From this it seems that:
- Possible voting population = 46,506,013
- Votes cast = 33,577,342 (turnout 72.2%)
- Votes cast for Leave = 17,410,742 (51.9%)
- Votes cast for Remain = 16,141,241 (38.1%)
- Margin of Leave over Remain = 3.8%
- NB: An unknown number of people have reported that they wanted to stay in the EU but voted Leave as a protest vote against the government.
- Possible voting population = 46,506,013
- Number of voters who did not vote = 27.8%
- Leave vote as % of eligible voters = 37.4%
- Remain vote as % of eligible voters = 34.7%
- Margin of Leave over Remain = 2.7%
END
