Brexit Voting Differences and Their Origins : A Comparison Between England, Scotland and Wales

The following thesis will examine and analyze the differences between England, Scotland and Wales in the British referendum on EU membership of 2016. Existing scientific literature offers many singular approaches as to why there were differences in voting behavior between the three British countries but mostly fail to acknowledge the possibility of a combination of plausible causes. Influencing factors of national identity, socio-demographics and attitude towards the EU are the origin of Scotland voting to remain in the EU while England and Wales favored the Brexit. As the socio-demographic factor of education and attitude towards the EU proved to be the most influential on the vote choice in the Brexit referendum, the strength of national identity in the three British countries appeared to account for certain differences between Scotland and its neighbors. This paper used the rich data set of wave 8 of the British Election Studies with over 30,000 respondents that originates from a widely respected as well as extensive questionnaire. Supporting this paper’s theoretical framework and, moreover, its analysis the BES data set was ameliorated.