Who Voted to Leave the EU

Yesterday the UK voted to leave the European Union. The immediate result has seen the Prime Minister announce his intended resignation and mayhem in the markets.

The interactive maps emerging in the main broadsheets this morning suggest that outside of London, Scotland, Northern Ireland and a few major cities most of the country voted to leave the EU. It also appears that the vote to leave was won by those voters who are facing the brunt of the government's austerity programme.

The Guardian has used a cartogram to illustrate how different areas voted in the EU referendum. On the map each electoral region has been sized by population. The result is a map which distorts the geography of the UK but more accurately reflects the number of votes cast for each side in the election.

Outside of London, Scotland, Northern Ireland and a few major cities the majority of the country voted to leave the EU. The Guardian has examined the demographics of each local area authority, exploring education levels, age and median income. These demographic graphs color each local authority based on whether a majority voted to leave or remain in the EU.

The graphs clearly show most of the areas that voted to leave are poorer, have less experience of higher education and tend to have an older population. Conversely it seems that remain voters were more likely to be richer, younger and have experience of higher education.

The Times has created a hexagon grid map to visualize the EU referendum result. Each local authority is colored to show how the area voted. Each color is also shaded to show the strength of the leave or remain vote in each local authority area. The darker the yellow or blue then the higher the vote for leave or remain.


This shading of the hexagons reveals some interesting results in London, where it appears that boroughs with higher median average incomes have voted more strongly to remain than the poorer outer boroughs. So even in areas which voted to remain in the EU it appears that those on lower incomes were more likely to have voted leave than those on higher incomes.