There has been a marked shift since the start of June from “remain” to “leave”.
In past fortnight the Vote Leave campaign has successfully raised the saliency of immigration, while the Stronger in Europe campaign has so far failed to keep the economic risks of Brexit at the forefront of voters’ minds.
This raises the prospect that the late deciders, who generally follow the news least, and have the weakest feelings about the EU per se, will take sides next week on the basis of “controlling our borders” rather than the dangers that Brexit poses for jobs, prosperity and living standards.
We should remember that public attitudes to immigration are prompted largely by the rise in insecurity and inequality over the past decade. Secure, well-paid jobs for millions of people are harder to come by, public services are being squeezed, most people in their twenties cannot afford to become home-owners, and so on. We can debate the reasons—technology, the 2008 banking crisis, demographic pressures on public spending, etc.
newsweek.com
One reason prediction markets seem to beat the polls is that the polls capture public sentiment in a limited time frame—instead of measuring the likelihood of something actually happening.
Unlike polls, which can run into methodological issues, the prediction markets “quickly incorporate new information, are largely efficient, and are impervious to manipulation,” a 2012 National Bureau of Economic Research paper written by Erik Snowberg, Justin Wolfers, and Eric Zitzewitz found.
“The consensus among people who’ve studied them is that the prediction markets are at the frontier of forecasting accuracy,” said Rajiv Sethi, an economics professor at Barnard College who has published several papers on the prediction markets.
blogs.wsj.com
IG Brexit Barometer shows 73.5% chance of 'Remain' vote winning
Traders placing bets on the IG Group binary market created for the Brexit vote seem to say ‘No’.
Just three days before the historic UK Brexit referendum, the ‘Brexit Barometer’ tracked by leading UK online trading firm IG Group Holdings plc (LON:IGG) shows a 73.5% chance of the Remain side winning the June 23 vote.
The IG Brexit Barometer is not a poll of the actual expected referendum result. Most of those including the IG-Survation poll show a much closer expected vote, with Remain holding a slight edge over Leave as of today (Monday June 20). IG and Survation will come out with their final pre-referendum poll tomorrow afternoon.
What the Barometer does show is what traders are predicting will happen (i.e. either Remain will win or Leave will win) when the final votes are tallied, not what the Remain vs. Leave margin will be. The data is based on the political binary market IG has created for clients to trade on.
leaprate.com