New polling finds that more than a third of Leave voters believed that £350m a week would be coming to the NHS
And one in five of all leave voters are still expecting the extra £350m a week for the NHS
In its August poll Opinium, which was one of the most accurate at the EU referendum, asked about whether at the time voters had believed the Leave Campaign on the £350m a week coming back to the NHS. There were the possible repsones:
A ” I believed this pledge at the time and think that the £350 million contribution will be given to the NHS instead once the UK leaves the EU.”
B “I believed this pledge at the time but no longer believe it will happen once the UK leaves the EU”
C “I did not believe this pledge at the time but think that the £350 million contribution will be given to the NHS instead once the UK leaves the EU”
D “I did not believe this pledge at the time and do not think it will happen once the UK leaves the EU”
E “N/A – I do not believe this was a pledge made by the Leave campaign”
F “Don’t know / had not heard about this before”
Amongst all who were sampled 25% responded with A or B as above – that at the time they believed that the extra money would be coming to the NHS. 55% responded C or D saying that at the the time didn’t believe it.
The interesting splits are when you look at how people actually voted. Amongst LEAVE voters more than a third, 35% said they had believed it at the time while 20% of all Leave voters answered A or C and still think the money will be forthcoming.
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The problem for TMay’s government, which did not make any of these commitments (It was the Leave campaign itself) is that there is still the expectation there amongst a significant proportion of the electorate
Opinium also asked about whether the sample thought the Leave and Remain campaigns had been misleading. A total of 36% thought that of Remain with 50% saying Leave had misled. On this 76% of all Remain voters believed that Leave had been misleading.