Surrey Live Brexit poll suggests nothing has changed since 2016 referendum

With an estimated one million people taking to London's streets on Saturday (March 23) to demand a 'People's Vote', there is much suggestion that a second referendum would yield a different result.

But if there was a vote tomorrow, how would you vote? Have your views changed since the 2016 vote?

SurreyLive decided to 'put it to the people' - as was demanded in Saturday's Brexit march to Westminster - with a poll on our Facebook page and a separate poll within a story about the march .

The results suggest that very little has changed in nearly three years with a swing of just 0.7% towards Leave, although Surrey still supports Remain overall.

What our polls asked and what people said

We ran two polls. The first, on Facebook, kept things simple and just asked 'If there was a People's Vote (second referendum) tomorrow - which way would you vote?'

There were 2,564 participants in the survey and 49% ( 1,256 ) said they would vote Leave. The other 51% ( 1,308 ) people voted Remain.

The second poll, which was created and added to a story on the Brexit march, asked a similar question but gave four options - two for Leave and two for Remain. The question was 'Should we still leave the EU?'

The possible answers were:

1. Yes, it's what people voted for
2. Yes, but only if we can get a better deal sorted out
3. No, we should never have agreed to leave in the first place
4. No, we now have enough information to know it'll be a bad thing for the UK no matter what

Of the 2,039 participants in the second poll, 48% ( 976 ) chose options 1 or 2 - saying they wanted to leave the EU. The other 52% ( 1,063 )  chose options 3 or 4 - to remain in the EU.

When you combine the two polls and add the total participants - of course some of the same people may have taken part in both polls - the percentages are as follows:

Total participants: 4,603

Leave: 48.5% (2,232)

Remain: 51.5% (2,371)

How does that compare to the 2016 referendum?

The results of our polls are almost exactly in line with Surrey's voting in the referendum. Surrey actually bucked the national trend and voted in favour of Remain in 2016 - or at least 52.2% did. The other 47.8% voted Leave.

The results of our poll show a 0.7% swing towards Leave which, taking into account any margin for error, means it's pretty much exactly the same result.

Of course, polls can't be trusted

The 2016 referendum showed us that polls are not reliable - exit polls suggested we were heading towards a resounding victory for Remain.

We know there is no way of knowing if it was only Surrey residents that voted, and of course it's very likely that non-Surrey residents would have taken part, however running it on our own Facebook page and within our own story limits the audience to one that's engaged with our site.

And it's more likely people would give their true view via on online poll, rather than if they were being asked face-to-face by a pollster after leaving the voting booth.

How have recent events affected things?

Within our second poll we sought to find out if anybody had changed their minds since the referendum. The answer seems to be that if you thought we should leave the EU in 2016, you still think we should leave regardless of current events. Of the 48% who voted for one of the Leave options, 45% ( 914 ) chose option 1 and just 3% ( 62 ) chose option 2, saying we should only leave if a better deal is sorted out.

The Remain votes were split evenly between option 3 (Remain because we shouldn't have voted to Leave in the first place) and option 4 (Remain as we now know what a mess it's likely to be). Around 26% chose each option, with option 3 seeing 525 votes and option 4 seeing 538 votes.

The breakdown of this poll suggests that those who have always thought we should exit the EU still think it, and those who always thought we should stay have another reason to back up that view.