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> The BBC seemed like it picked a winner, and the US media does the same while dismissing all others. If I remember right the last UK election was pretty surprising to the BBC and its pollsters.

I don't know anything about Minnesota, but wrt this referendum and the last UK General Election it wasn't so much "picking a winner" as that relentless vilification of the non-establishment side led to people concealing their actual voting intentions from pollsters. In the case of the GE this even applied to exit polling, i.e. after people had voted. There wasn't any official exit polling for the referendum, but some major banks did it privately and I think Leave's premature concession early in the results points to the same thing happening there.

Thank you for a very thoughtful and measured post, by the way; we could do with more of that. The atmosphere here in the UK at the moment is just poisonous, with some fairly mortifying behaviour on both sides.

> relentless vilification of the non-establishment side led to people concealing their actual voting intentions from pollsters

I get the same thought and would love to know how someone would do a study on the subject. I know it was true in MN at the time (who wants to admit they're voting for a wrestler because they are sick of the other two)[1].

> The atmosphere here in the UK at the moment is just poisonous, with some fairly mortifying behavior on both sides.

Yep, the edges always show up, more to prove the other sides point than help really.

1) I clenched my teeth and voted by party, although I couldn't say I was surprised by the outcome - and here I am doing the exact thing by making it clear I didn't vote for him - sigh.

> would love to know how someone would do a study on the subject

It's normally called the "Shy Tory Factor" in the UK; Wikipedia has a page [1] but it's a bit thin.

After the 2015 GE the British Polling Council commissioned an independent inquiry on the subject, whose findings you can read here [2]. (Disclaimer: I haven't.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor

[2] http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3789/1/Report_final_revised.pdf

What strikes me is how counterproductive this all is - in this week's case the inaccurate polling made the final result far more of a shock and thus presumably far more disruptive than it would otherwise have been. It may even have caused the final result - I think turnout for the under-25 demographic, which skewed heavily Remain, was only about a third, and I've seen several comments to the effect of "I didn't think I needed to vote, Remain was ahead anyway".

I've seen several comments to the effect of "I didn't think I needed to vote, Remain was ahead anyway".

I've even seen someone explain (on the BBC): "I didn't think my vote mattered, so I voted leave. I'm a bit worried now".

I really hope that that's a minor occurrence, I really don't want to consider the possibility that large parts of the voting public treat elections/referenda with less seriousness than the average talent show vote.

Nothing I've seen points to that being anything more than BBC spin. According to this poll [1] 4% of Remain voters are happy with the outcome while 1% of Leave voters are unhappy with it.

[1] https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/746820394217259008

(Caveat - it says "via ComRes" but it hasn't appeared in ComRes' published polls page yet.)

In an era where every quack with an opinion is broadcasting it online, the media can basically concoct whatever narrative they want by choosing to elevate a few people's ramblings to the level of news.

An honest headline for a lot of the news in the past couple days is "People on losing side of election unhappy". But then people would realize how stupid it is. And when the news is about people's reaction to the news, you begin to wonder what the real cause and effect is.

In normal UK elections, due to first-past-the-post-per-district, people are used to their vote not counting.

As an American, that's why I'm kind of shocked that this kind of issue only required a simple majority. Usually out in the states a change of this magnitude requires a super-majority. For example, to ban guns in the US would require a two thirds majority of states to be for.

in the US, concealing unpopular opinions from pollsters is known as the "Bradley effect". It was massively over-diagnosed in 2008 and 2012, but seems to be back in play now.

This, a number of times.

Ridiculing ordinary people over years is what made Brexit and made Trump a possible candidate.

I did not argue for Brexit (I knew too little) and I don't like Trump but I am smart enough to understand why people are fed up.

Your point about Christianity rings true as well: I understand why a religious villain makes a better character in a plot but somewhere it has to stop (unless someone is pushing an agenda but they don't do do they ? ;-)

> made fun of constantly on TV

This. I've heard far too many charges of racism and xenophobia, as if many legitimately believe 52% of England are racists.

Heaven forbid an electorate that has not been a beneficiary of globalism vote against the staus quo!

Well, there were people voting to leave and using "immigration" as their justification. I would never claim it was 52%, or that 52% of the UK are 'racists'.

However, it was a factor for some portion, and it may have been enough of a portion of votes to be part of the few % that gave 'leave' the victory.

Bear in mind the level of immigration to the UK has risen very rapidly over the past 10-15 years and it has not been evenly distributed across the country. There are places where people have seen the racial makeup of their neighbourhoods changed greatly, where once they could reasonably walk down a street and expect to hear conversations in their own language now it won't be unusual for them to not understand half or more of the conversations going on around them. A lot of people find that quite alienating especially considering it's happened so quickly.

When people talk about immigration that's really what they mean, I do genuinely believe that the UK is not a particularly racist place that the huge majority of people even those who cite immigration as an issue believe in "live and let live", but I think they feel that tolerance has been abused by a system that says free movement of people is meant to benefit them but so far as they can see it does not.

That hypothesis doesn't square with the fact that the most populous regions, London in particular where immigrants are much more likely to settle voted overwhelmingly for remaining.

The Guardian has a graph showing how areas with a higher % of immigrants voted to Remain http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/jun/...

In the British Social Attitudes Survey, 30% of the population said that they have "some level of racial prejudice". Given the stigma of those beliefs, I expect the real number could be significantly higher.

Attributing Brexit solely to racism and xenophobia is clearly unreasonable, but it is equally unreasonable to dismiss it entirely as a factor. There are some striking demographic correlations between Leave voters and people who admitted to being racially prejudiced.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/27/-sp-racism-o...

There are some striking demographic correlations between Leave voters and people who admitted to being racially prejudiced.

I think self-assessments on negative habits are wrought with problems, I wouldn't rely on those for anything.

But your comment made me realize something else: if people identify problems that you recognize, and you then see those people vilified as racists, you may start to question your beliefs. But the second and third time this happens, you may start to question the label itself.

I'm not happy with the above phrasing, so I apologize for my runaway train of thought. But I think people are happy to self-assess as racists because they identify with demonized politicians, not necessarily because they are aware of their own racism. It becomes a badge of honour, so to speak.

There's a rather wide chasm, though, between "some level of racial prejudice" and the fantastical "52% of the UK is racist." The first is plausible, the second is not.

I think almost all people are racists if they're coldly honest. Few are. They may recognize the feelings as "wrong" and be ashamed and deny having them, but it's human nature. We are drawn to people who look and act like we do, and we are suspicious of people who look and act differently from our group.

You're confusing thoughts with behavior, a racist is someone who exhibits racist behavior, those who recognize those thoughts as wrong, and don't act on them, are not racist. All people have wrong thoughts constantly, it's whether they act on them or not that matters.

In addition, Labor was against the EU before Blair, recently a Labor leader (Corpyn) who has been historically critical of the influence of the EU was voted in with a landslide (and establishment media called them idealistic young idiots); now the only reason to be against the EU is to be a small-minded racist pensioner.

edit: This is the cry of financial services who were using the UK as an EU tax vehicle, and the uncritical middle-class are following along with their complete blanketing of the media. The only benefit that the EU gave to the left is that British elites on average hate workers more than European elites. This credibility was completely lost by the way Greece was treated.

The BBC purposefully tries to be impartial, the "picking the winner" part was based on polling data and the actions of the financial markets. Other media organisations did the same.

As there was no exit poll, they had nothing to talk about for 2 hours before the start of the results came in so just had endless speculation from pollsters and their ilk

If there is one lesson to be learned, it's never ever trust polling organisations, they get it wrong time and time again, but somehow keep getting paid?

I think the BBC does a reasonable job of remaining neutral between political parties - as you say, the complaints more or less balance out. But as an institution they very definitely have a strong ideology (pro-EU, pro-multiculturalism) which doesn't accurately reflect the country as a whole. Part of that is just the London filter bubble, but not all of it.

A recent memo by the BBC's head of political research admitted this:

“It seems to me that the London bubble has to burst if there is to be any prospect of addressing the issues that have brought us to our current situation. There are many millions of people in the UK who do not enthuse about diversity and do not embrace metropolitan values yet do not consider themselves lesser human beings for all that. Until their values and opinions are acknowledged and respected, rather than ignored and despised, our present discord will persist. Because these discontents run very wide and very deep and the metropolitan political class, confronted by them, seems completely bewildered and at a loss about how to respond (“who are these ghastly people and where do they come from?” doesn’t really hack it). The 2016 EU referendum has witnessed the cashing in of some very bitter bankable grudges but I believe that, throughout this 2016 campaign, Europe has been the shadow not the substance.”

They give at least an estimation. I think that giving some error margins would make them more useful but I doubt the general public would appreciate it. Take for example the data here: https://ig.ft.com/sites/brexit-polling/ Percentage for remain varies a lot depending on the poll on June 22, from 41% to to 55% (although some polls don't seem to consider undecided voters, not sure how it affects the result).

I don't think the US news media works that way. I think that the news media makes every person feel that they are the sensible person of non-extreme nature, and that to the sensible person their views are so obvious, and that other outside people are hostile and ignorant.

I don't think anyone would tolerate even 5 whole minutes (!) of mockery from their favorite news distributors. I also think most people aren't looking for news, but opinions. They want already-respectable sounding narratives that they can adopt themselves without spending any effort.

So no, I don't think religious people of America watch in pain as their news distributors, represented by a few faces, mock them for their stupidity, but I do think that news distributors sell a very poor-hostile message to poor people as part of an aspirational twist.

You aren't the lowest, you're actually kind of normal, but elites have been stepping all over you. But the people below you, those are the losers, and those people don't deserve help because they're lazy, they're drug users, they're impulsive, they're unprincipled and selfish, they're Godless, and if the government gave them any help they'd spend it all on drugs and having 6 babies.

You can just picture that dirty-faced skank with ultra-short denims and a tank top, an utterly unkempt look of unabashed poverty, with her no-good boyfriend. She probably votes Democrat all the time because if the government gave her a handout, hey of course she's going to vote for them, the Democrats are basically buying drugs for her. (to be read in the voice of a younger Rush Limbaugh)

> I don't think anyone would tolerate even 5 whole minutes

And we don't. Still, it's called "mass media" for a reason. If you don't watch TV, you read the same on the internet, billboards, in the movies, video games, from your friends and family, co-workers, people calling your home at the dinner time etc. etc.

One of my subpoints was that what you call "mass" media is not that mass, but quite segmented and self-selecting, as are friends, and I also think that political belief and frame tend to be passed down through family.

"Friends and family" does not literally mean your bff and your mother, jfyi. As for self-selecting other things - sure, you can go completely dark, quit your job, do not read or watch anything and, probably, in your opinion, it's not entirely ridiculous.

So we don't have "average people" in Scotland - which voted heavily in favour of remaining in the EU?

Glasgow, which has some of the most deprived inner city condition of anywhere in the UK, voted to remain.

I'm not saying that an you know it. There are other factors, but I'm primarily talking about a set of voters discussed.

How did the deprived inner city districts vote?

Every single area of Scotland voted to stay in the EU - not sure if the detail in the results is clear enough to show deprived areas:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-3659...

The only place in Scotland that came close to not voting to remain was Moray, which is quite rural and not really that deprived.

Scottish anti-Establishment sentiment is usually directed against London rather than Brussels, for historical reasons.

Given that the "Establishment" is seen as a very London thing and very pro EU (see the results for London) I'm not sure that hangs together. Nobody was rebelling by voting Remain!

I meant that, from their perspective, "Establishment" wickedness of the sort being discussed in the article comes from London rather than Brussels, so supporting Brexit wouldn't make any sense.

> In the US, the average person has grievances, is made fun of constantly on TV, and watches as people argue solutions that don't seem to have anything to do with the problem but sure fit their "let no crisis go to waste" mentality. Religious people are always portrayed as secretly corrupt or idiots[2]. Your jobs can get shipped off, replaced by someone on a visa, or a robot will do them. Celebrities are constantly shown knowing more about your job than you and calling you stupid or a villain.

I'm not from the US but I find this surprising. My experience is that politics and the media tell the people what the people want to hear which most of the time are simple solutions to complex problems. Most of the time the problems are someone else's fault, of course. So, yes, people have been deceived but the solution is not yet another vote for absurd reasons. BTW, tomorrow we have (again) elections in Spain. Whatever the result the discussion has already left me dissapointed.

Why is whether someone is a widow or not relevant to whether or not they can be sued in your mind?

Would it be different if it was a widower? Or is that acceptable because men can deliver with things like that whereas women can barely cope with the grief of losing a man let alone all the legal stuff that is probably way over their head.

He was basically suing a widow because of a remark her husband made in a book (husband's version of a story). In other words, the person who he had a problem with was killed. He then continued to sue the estate (widow).

"Would it be different if it was a widower?"

I would still have a problem with continuing a lawsuit because of something a man's wife said.

"Or is that acceptable because men can deliver with things like that whereas women can barely cope with the grief of losing a man let alone all the legal stuff that is probably way over their head."

sigh... Its lines like this that make me think the divide is too great and our better angels are long gone. Sadly, I'm reluctant to give up my seat on buses or hold the door open these days because I don't know if I'll offend. Its so much easier to just ignore others and tune it all out and make like I'm oblivious.

The person he was suing wrote a book and repeated the story. In addition to claiming it on a talk radio show. Dead or not the story was now to a national audience due to even more publicity from the movie about Kyle. A jury judged that story a lie. Having a widow has no bearing on this situation.

Would you let a lie about your character and stating you wanted more SEALs killed stand?

> Would you let a lie about your character and stating you wanted more SEALs killed stand?

I would fight the lie (if it is a lie), but I would never continue to sue when the person who has offended me is dead. It just makes you a bully. Your reputation is the important thing and not the money. Frankly, going after the money just shows its was probably true. The appeals course reversed the judgement, we'll see how he continues it.

I think you are misrepresenting the situation. I have had a read up on this and assume we are talking about the widow of Chris Kyle, he made money off the false statements, money his wife was still making. He was entitled to sue and just because the guy was killed doesn't mean he should not be able to sue, especially because the book was still being sold.

Personally I hold doors and offer seats. I find that if someone makes an issue of it most/all people think they are the idiot and not me.

"he made money off the false statements"

Mr. Kyle is not here to defend himself. He might be entitled to sue, but if it is supposed to clear his name, it won't. It shows he's a person of low character.

well he didnt wait until he died to sue his estate did he.

it is not different for a widower.

>Never mind the number of government agencies that can just take your stuff without any recourse on your part.

I keep hearing this on the internet being portrayed as if the "average person" thinks "taxes are too high". The truth is this[0], it isn't just that they are too high for some groups, it's actually a plurality who feel taxes are too low on some groups and institutions.

[0] http://www.gallup.com/poll/1714/taxes.aspx

uhm, I was referring to asset forfeiture[1].

As to your statement, the first question[2]:

Do you consider the amount of federal income tax you have to pay as too high, about right, or too low?

  2016 Apr 6-10
  -------------
  51% Too high
  37% About right
   3% Too low
   3% No opinion

Is pretty much what I expect. I would imagine the whole "feel taxes are too low" on others is generated by the large people not paying federal taxes, and the constant barrage of news about others having these loopholes that the normal person just doesn't get.

1) http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/08/26/p...

2) http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod... - gotta love png instead of a table

I mistook your comment on asset forfeiture as another "the poor man thinks taxes should be lower on the rich." I agree with your sentiment about asset forfeiture, which I'd argue is an indirect consequence of tax cuts on the wealthier end of the spectrum being made up by "revenue" in the form of fines and seizures from the lower and middle classes.

...but since you referenced my comment, I think its context needs to be validated. In order to give context to this, I'll post the information from the poll here. I'll just list data from the most recent poll, April 6-10, 2016.

  As I read off some different groups, please tell me if
  you think they are paying their FAIR share in federal
  taxes, paying too MUCH or paying too LITTLE? First, how
  about ... ?
  
  LOWER-INCOME PEOPLE
  31% Fair share
  46% Too much
  20% Too little
   3% No Opinion
  
  MIDDLE-INCOME PEOPLE
  39% Fair share
  53% Too much
   6% Too little
   2% No Opinion

  UPPER INCOME PEOPLE
  21% Fair share
  15% Too much
  61% Too little
   3% No Opinion

  CORPORATIONS
  16% Fair share
  12% Too much
  67% Too little
   5% No Opinion

I encourage all to actually look at these polls to see how the attitudes have changed over time. It's important to realize the sentiment of the American populace as it stands now; it certainly helps us keep from creating cartoon versions of the "average person" as the OP submits some do.

[0] http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...