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Explaining support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates: the case of Wales

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

The 2016 EU referendum was a key moment in the history of the United Kingdom. It has changed the course of the country and continues to shape political competition in the UK. Despite research on which voters cast their ballot for Leave having become a minor industry in recent years, we still know little about what factors motivated our politicians to do so. Using original data from the 2016 Welsh Candidate Study, this article explains support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates in Wales. It finds that both candidates’ socio-economic profile and political attitudes influenced their decision to vote Leave in 2016. The strongest determinants of Leave vote were candidates’ views on how the EU works; how democratic it is and how much influence it can exert. Candidates’ occupational background and policy concerns were also relevant, but their effects were slightly weaker. These findings not only highlight that there are important similarities between what influenced politicians and voters to cast their ballot for Leave, but also some salient differences.

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Notes

  1. There are two benefits to focusing on Wales. First, it provides insight into Leave versus Remain support in a nation that was most divided at the EU referendum. Second, there is unique survey data from Wales that capture the political views and personal characteristics of candidates of different parties in the immediate run up to the EU referendum. That said, the focus on candidates at one particular devolved election does of course limit the scope of this study and the generalisability of its findings.

  2. The exception here is the study by Goodwin and Milazzo (2017) that did not find a systematic effect associated with age on someone’s likelihood of voting Leave.

  3. It has also been shown that Leave vote was higher in regions where immigrants made up higher proportions of the population (Colantone and Stanig 2018; Goodwin and Heath 2016).

  4. A similar mix of factors have also been found to influence voters’ desire for renegotiating EU membership and support for the EU more broadly (Vasilopoulou and Keith 2019; Vasilopoulou and Talving 2019).

  5. The recent study by Crines et al. (2018) looks at the EU referendum vote of the members of the parliamentary Labour Party, but only in the context of whether it had an effect on their support for Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 confidence motion and the following leadership contest or not.

  6. Further information about the sample is provided in Appendix.

  7. Given the timing of the 2016 Welsh Candidate Study, the vast majority of the responses were received before the EU referendum.

  8. I opted against a further distinction between candidates without a university degree due to the small number of candidates who would have fallen into each of the more specific non-university categories.

  9. The non-specialist reference category encompasses candidates who describe their occupation as something that does not require extensive training or involve senior management (e.g., manual labour, clerical work, sales), and those who have never had a job. Whereas studies of voters have sometimes split this non-specialist category into further sub-categories, this is not practical here due to the limited number of candidates who would fall into each of the more specific non-specialist categories.

  10. The 2016 Welsh Candidate Study asked respondents to rank different institutions by the level of influence they are perceived to currently have over the way Wales is run and the level of influence they ought to have over the way Wales is run. EU influence measure combines candidates’ responses to these two questions. Candidates are coded 1 ‘too little’ if they rank the level of influence the EU ought to have higher than the level of influence it is perceived to currently have, 2 ‘about right’ if they rank them equally, and 3 ‘too much’ if they rank the level of influence the EU ought to have lower than the level of influence it is perceived to currently have.

  11. Estimates from models where past AM is operationalised as incumbents (coded 1) versus challengers (coded 1) are robust to those presented here and available upon request.

  12. The idea that only a sub-set of personal characteristics has a systematic effect on Leave support is broadly in line with the evidence from the voter side. Most studies of voters find the same and, even if they do find a broad range of personal characteristics to significantly shape Leave support, these effects tend to be weaker than those associated with voters’ political views and attitudes.

  13. Respondents’ views towards the state of democracy in Wales and the UK do not have significant effects on their EU referendum position. It is the evaluations of the EU, not the domestic political system, that are driving support for, or opposition to, Brexit.

  14. Interestingly, the evidence from the voter side is somewhat mixed. Whereas it is widely accepted that voters’ attitudes and concerns regarding policy areas that are prominently linked to the EU in the public discourse, such as immigration, are crucial to understanding support for Brexit (e.g., Arnorsson and Zoega 2018; Goodwin and Milazzo 2017; Hobolt 2016), perceptions of how the EU works have not been found to systematically influence support for Brexit (Vasilopoulou 2016).

  15. This information derives from the 2016 Welsh Candidate Study for candidates and from the pre-election wave of the 2016 Welsh Election Study (Awan-Scully 2018) for voters.

  16. A similar pattern is evident among elected Assembly Members. Kirsty Williams, solitary representative of the Welsh Liberal Democrats in Cardiff Bay, campaigned for Remain, there is overwhelming support for Remain among Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour Assembly Members, and all candidates elected under the UKIP Wales banner backed Leave. The same unity was not evident among the candidates who were elected under the Welsh Conservative Party label, with the then-leader Andrew R.T. Davies, Darren Millar, and Mark Isherwood casting their ballot for Leave in contrast to many of their partisan colleagues in Cardiff Bay.

  17. There is some evidence from the voter side in Wales that changes to the UK’s terms of EU membership could potentially influence support for Leave versus Remain. Public support for Leave exceeded that for Remain (45% versus 37%) in the closest Welsh Political Barometer prior to the approval of the UK’s renegotiation of EU membership package in February 2016 (Awan-Scully 2016a), whereas the opposite was true (36% versus 41%) after it was approved (Awan-Scully 2016b). This does suggest, even if not prove, that preferences for Leave or Remain could potentially be revised as circumstances change.

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  1. School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Siim Trumm

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Appendix: 2016 Welsh Candidate Study

Appendix: 2016 Welsh Candidate Study

The 2016 Welsh Candidate Study includes 111 candidates for whom information on all variables that are included in the analysis is available. Duncan index of dissimilarity is used to show that the sample is representative of the full population of candidates. It ranges from 0 to 1, and higher values indicate greater discrepancy between the sample and the full population (Duncan and Duncan 1955).

Table 5 shows the comparison between the sample used in the analysis and the full population. The comparison of partisanship yields a value of 0.11, the comparison of candidacy type a value of 0.05, and the comparison of electoral performance a value of 0.02. The sample is representative of the full population on these three key characteristics.

Table 5 2016 Welsh candidate study sample
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Trumm, S. Explaining support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates: the case of Wales. Br Polit 16, 58–73 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-020-00135-7

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