Leave camp leads in early referendum results, but polls indicate RemainLONDON (Reuters) -
Opinion polls suggest that
Britons have voted in a referendum to stay in the
European Union, but the first few official results on Friday put the 'Brexit' campaign ahead, prompting wild swings in the value of the pound.
With results in from the first five of 382 voting districts, those in favour of ending
Britain's 43-year membership had a small lead of 3,207 votes, though it was far too early to discern a reliable trend.
Opinion surveys pointed to a vote to
Remain, and two prominent anti-EU campaigners acknowledged they looked likely to lose.
Nigel Farage, head of the
UK Independence Party and a leading voice in favour of leaving the EU, told
Sky News: "
It's been an extraordinary referendum campaign, turnout looks to be exceptionally high and looks like Remain will edge it."
Farage said his prediction was based on "what I know from some of my friends in the financial markets who have done some big polling".
Government minister Theresa Villiers, who also campaigned for Britain to leave, told Sky News her instinct was that the Remain side had won.
Farage's comments and pro-Remain opinion polls pushed the pound to his highest level this year, above $1
.50. But it then plunged after the vote count in the northeastern city of
Sunderland showed a stronger-than-expected vote in favour of taking Britain out of the EU.
Sterling fell more than six cents, diving as low as $1.4351 before recovering to around $1.4540 in extremely volatile and illiquid trading.
A vote to stay would come as a massive relief to Britain's 27 EU partners, who had feared the departure of the bloc's second biggest economy would weaken
Europe's global clout and fuel the rise of eurosceptic movements in other countries.
Prime Minister David Cameron had urged Britons to vote Remain, warning that the alternative was a leap in the dark that would hurt trade and investment, bring about a self-inflicted recession, undermine the pound and push up shopping bills and the cost of holidays.
Advocates of going it alone said a 'Brexit' would invigorate the economy by freeing business from suffocating EU bureaucracy, and allow the country to recover its sovereignty and regain control of immigration.
Before a single result had emerged, a survey by pollster YouGov showed Remain ahead by a margin of 52 to 48 percent. Unlike a classic exit poll, it was based on online responses by a pre-selected sample of people rather than a survey of voters as they left polling stations.
Pollster Ipsos-MORI also put Remain in the lead, saying that surveys it had carried out on Wednesday and Thursday gave it a 54-46 margin of victory. An Ipsos-MORI poll published earlier had just a 52-48 split for Remain.
"It's early days and there will be twists and turns through the early hours of this morning but, for now, the markets have taken that YouGov poll as a strong indication that the Remain camp has won," said
Jeremy Cook, chief economist at international payments company
World First in
London.
IMMIGRATION ANGST
A vote to stay would leave the EU intact, with its most free-market proponent still a member. However, what began as a domestic political gambit by
Cameron has polarised the country and exposed wider challenges facing Europe: public angst over immigration and the falling living standards of many in the world's richest region.
Marred by the murder of a pro-EU MP,
Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed in the street a week ago, the campaign and its divisive rhetoric highlighted the populist wave also seeping into the
U.S. election race.
A defiant Farage said he was not conceding defeat, even though he feared the result would go against him.
"I hope
I am wrong, I hope I am made a fool of, believing that to be the case.
Either way, whether I am right or wrong, if we do stay part of this union it is doomed, it is finished anyway. If we fail tonight it will not be us that knocks out the first brick from the wall, it will be someone else," he said.
Ralph Brinkhaus, a senior ally of
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and deputy parliamentary floor leader for her conservatives in the
Bundestag, told Reuters: "The released polls show the expected neck-and-neck race. It will remain exciting until the early morning hours. I hope that the
British have decided against a Brexit."
- published: 24 Jun 2016
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