Voting Determinants of Brexit: How Trade and Immigration Affected the Vote Share for Brexit across the UK

On June 23rd, 2016, the UK shocked the world when 52% of voters decided the country should leave the EU. The referendum results reverberated through the country, the EU, and around the world. Prime Minister David Cameron stepped down in the referendum’s wake and the UK political elite has found itself having to almost exclusively focus on Brexit. As a string of surprising election results shock the globe, it becomes clear that a new trend of voter behavior appears to be emerging in many countries. This paper hopes that analyzing the determinants of the Brexit Referendum can illuminate this new trend in voter behavior. The hypothesis presented is that within a Local Authority District, the ‘Leave’ vote share is more related to subjective feelings towards immigration than objective hardships faced due to unemployment from immigration and trade vulnerability. Further, the flow of immigrants will have a heterogeneous effect across regions of the UK, with increased immigration increasing the Leave vote share in
England and Wales, while decreasing the Leave vote share in Scotland. These hypotheses are confirmed by the data analysis and regressions, as there are positive relationships between both the change in the foreign-born population share and the trade integration level and the Leave vote share across the UK. However, in Scotland alone the relationship between the change in the foreign-born population share and the Leave vote share is negative.