Less Intelligent People Were More Likely to Vote for Brexit, Study Says

People are clocking onto the fact that Brexit was… not a good idea. In fact, a recent poll suggests that just a fifth of leave voters now think that Brexit has “gone well”, according to polling by Public First. So why on earth did more than half the country vote for it?

Well, new research suggests that leave voters are more likely to have lower cognitive abilities those who cast their vote for remain – which may have made them more susceptible to disinformation and misinformation. 

Researchers from the University of Bath found 73 percent of British voters in the top 10 percent of cognitive performance voted remain. Among those in the bottom 10 percent, only 40 percent wanted to stay in the EU.  

This correlation remained – though less strongly – even when researchers controlled for income, education and age. Even among couples where the two spouses voted in different ways, the remain-voting partner was likely to do better on cognitive tests than their leave-voting counterpart.   

Scientists analysed the data of 3,183 UK couples from an ongoing longitudinal study called Understanding Society, which has followed a representative sample of households since 2009. Their findings have now been published in the academic journal PLOS One.

Study authors Chris Dawson and Paul Baker say their results suggest that “low cognitive ability makes people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation” – like, for instance, the supposed £350m Brexit windfall that would go to the NHS, or that we’d be able to “take back control of our borders” .

Intelligence is not the only factor in people’s voting choices, they note, but it is – plausibly – one of the factors. “It’s an uncomfortable thing to say, but I think it’s important to be said,” Dawson told the Times. “We have increasing amounts of fake news and it’s getting more and more sophisticated.”  

He added that the findings were on a population level, not a personal one, and that people “shouldn’t get angry with these results, or joyful, depending on who they voted for”.