What effect might Britain\u2019s party leaders have on the referendum on the country\u2019s continued European Union membership? In the social sciences it is well known that leaders can have decisive effects on the outcome of elections and referendums. Amid complex debates, it has been shown that citizens often rely on their leaders to provide \u201cinformational shortcuts\u201d or \u201ccues\u201d that help them decide how to vote. The same is true for referendums, where leaders can play important roles by helping voters make up their minds about how to vote. All of this raises an intriguing question. What effects will the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ukip leader Nigel Farage have on the public vote? Are they likely to galvanise public support for remaining in the EU, or might their campaigning increase the prospect of Britain leaving the EU? And how do their effects vary across electorates, age groups and social classes?<\/p>\n
To answer this question Professor Goodwin, along with his co-investigators Professor Simon Hix (LSE) and Professor Mark Pickup (Simon Fraser University), have\u00a0carried out an online survey experiment with YouGov<\/a>, supported by the\u00a0Economic and Social Research Council<\/a>, the London School of Economics and the School of Politics and International Relations<\/a> at the University of Kent<\/a>. Their\u00a0experimental design explores the effects of leaders in a far more robust way than a standard poll or survey. Experiments can establish cause and effect while holding other variables constant \u2013 in this case testing the effects of leaders on the referendum vote.<\/p>\n For more information on this online survey experiment visit\u00a0http:\/\/whatukthinks.org\/eu\/cameron-corbyn-and-farage-how-might-they-affect-the-eu-referendum-vote\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What effect might Britain\u2019s party leaders have on the referendum on the country\u2019s continued European Union membership? In the social sciences it is well known … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[131001,131002],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}