People with lower cognitive ability ‘were more likely to vote for Brexit’

[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/981283a2-8947-11ee-b411-d7778fd6fa75](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/981283a2-8947-11ee-b411-d7778fd6fa75)

## The trend persists even when taking into account factors such as income, education and age — although scientists cautioned that the research did not prove a causal link

The cleverer people are, the more likely they were to vote to stay in the European Union, a study has found.

Among those Britons in the top 10 per cent by a measure of cognitive performance, 73 per cent voted remain in 2016. Among those in the bottom 10 per cent, only 40 per cent did.

The relationship persisted, albeit less strongly, even when taking into account factors such as income, education and age, implying that it was not solely a reflection of cultural effects. It also remained when the scientists looked at couples in which husbands and wives voted in different ways. The remain-voting partner was, they found, more likely to do better on cognitive tests.

Chris Dawson, from the [University of Bath](https://archive.ph/o/L1lNj/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-bath-is-the-university-of-the-year-2023-k72kk3fwp) — a remain voter — said that people should be wary of 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.”

Nevertheless, the population difference was significant. According to the findings, only the cleverest third of leave voters would be classed as of above average intelligence among remain voters.

The results came from analysing an on-running longitudinal study called Understanding Society. Since 2009 this has been following a nationally representative sample of households, collecting a wealth of data, including their performance on a suite of standardised tests. These tests involved assessments of reasoning, working memory and numeracy. More recently, it added questions about how people voted in the 2016 referendum.

Dawson and his colleagues looked at 3,183 couples involved in the study.

They also looked at the 463 heterosexual married couples who had voted in different ways but had managed to get through the referendum without divorcing. The fact that [Brexit ](https://archive.ph/o/L1lNj/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/brexit?page=1)voting half in these couples was also on average the poorer cognitive performer was especially interesting, Dawson said. “If you have people living in the same household, having the same experiences of living in the UK, it controls for so much.”

Other scientists warned that although the study did appear to find a link between intelligence and voting intention, it could not be used to say definitively that it was causal — that the reason people voted leave was because they were less clever.

“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,” Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of statistics at the Open University, said. “While this research doesn’t rule that possibility out, it certainly can’t establish that it’s true.”

Establishing causality, rather than only correlation, is a standard problem with observational studies such as this. “People who voted in different ways in the referendum differed in a great number of respects other than their cognitive ability,” McConway said. “Some of those other differences may have been correlated with cognitive ability, but not caused by cognitive ability.”

Even so, Dawson said, in his view there were plausible reasons that intelligence may have been be one factor. “It’s an uncomfortable thing to say, but I think it’s important to be said. We have increasing amounts of fake news and it’s getting more and more sophisticated.”

He said there was evidence that misinformation had played a role in the Brexit vote, and that cognitive ability was one factor determining whether people could spot fake news. “This suggests that something we all have to live with is essentially the result of people being able to spread fake information and fake promises that some people just couldn’t distinguish from reality.”

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by Constant__18