Abstract
ABSTRACT Recent votes for populist parties and policies have been a focus for an increasingly significant body of academic research. In the UK this has particularly focused research on the drivers of the vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. In spite of a growing body of work on the subject, the literature investigating the applicability of spatial econometric methods is surprisingly thin. This paper applies such methods to hitherto unused data for the West Midlands region, where we have an unusually rich set of small-area results. The work finds substantial spatial autocorrelation even after demographic differences are accounted for. Whilst focusing on a particular region, the rise of populism globally gives these findings a wider salience.
Highlights
In June 2016, a majority of voters in the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU)
Some analyses of Brexit find systematic similarities with the regional distribution of votes for the Front Nationale in France (Becker et al, 2017). Are these spatial patterns solely the result of demographic factors? Using a spatial error model and highly localized data in the West Midlands, this paper finds that even after accounting for demographic differences, clear spatial patterns remain in the 2016 vote in that region
This paper has demonstrated that, even after controlling for demographic factors, spatial autocorrelation in the residual vote pattern remains, suggesting that demographics alone cannot account for the 2016 vote to Leave the EU in the West Midlands
Summary
The result was a shock to most in the UK – where a substantial majority of voters had expected a ‘Remain’ victory (Ashcroft, 2016). This result will have a substantial economic impact on the UK and across Europe, in certain sectors, countries and regions (Chen et al, 2018; Lawless & Morgenroth, 2019), with the overwhelming preponderance of academic work suggesting a significant deleterious effect on the UK economy (Dhingra et al, 2016a, 2016b). Academics and others have taken a keen interest in the potential drivers of the vote in the UK, both in its own right and as a case of a more general phenomenon
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