Study: clever people were more likely to vote Remain

Specifically, the study found that those in the top 10% of cognitive performance were 73% likely to vote Remain, while those in the bottom 10% were only 40% likely to do so. This relationship persisted even when taking into factors such as income, education and age, suggesting that it was not simply a reflection of social or economic factors.

It also remained when the scientists looked at couples in which husbands and wives voted in different ways. The Remain-voting partner was more likely to do better on cognitive tests, researchers found.

But Chris Dawson, from the University of Bath — a Remain voter — said that people should be wary of over-interpreting his findings. 

“People shouldn’t get angry with this, or joyful, depending on who they voted for,” he said. “This is about differences at a population level. If you drew two random people who voted Leave or Remain, it says very little about differences that might exist between those people.”

According to the findings, only the cleverest third of Leave voters would be classed as above-average intelligence were they Remain voters.

But other scientists warned that although the study did appear to find a link between cognitive ability and voting intention, it could not be used to say definitively that the reason people voted Leave was because they were less intelligent.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of statistics at the Open University, said: “There’s an obvious temptation, perhaps particularly if one takes a certain set of views about the referendum, the campaign and its outcome, to assume that the finding of an association between measures of cognitive ability and the way people voted in the Brexit referendum means that having lower cognitive ability caused people to be more likely to vote leave.

“While this research doesn’t rule that possibility out, it certainly can’t establish that it’s true.”

The study was rubbished by right-wing author Ross Clark in the Daily Telegraph, who wrote Dawson was asserting “that an awful lot of people weren’t intelligent enough to sift through information during the campaign which was ‘contradictory, false and often fraudulent, especially regarding the pro-Leave campaign’.”

He said: “The liberal Left used to be the champions of people who hadn’t been to university, and perhaps hadn’t performed well at school. Now it seems to hold them in contempt. Remain campaigners risk demonstrating what the political philosopher Michael Sandel has called the ‘tyranny of merit’. 

“How much longer before the enlightened liberals demand universal suffrage be ended, and that you need a degree to be able to vote?”.