To see how the country’s referendum vote could affect a general election, we’ve translated the referendum results (which in England, Scotland and Wales were counted by council area, not constituency) into results broken down by parliamentary seats.
And when you do that, you get a radically different outcome. Instead of a close result, Leave win in a landslide.
Although the referendum result was close nationally, Remain piled up many of its votes in a relatively small number of constituencies (London and Scotland being prime examples). As a result, the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system would produce an extremely skewed result. [...]
That’s backed up by the fact that political scientist Chris Hanretty conducted a similar exercise using a more complex methodology, and he came out with a very similar result: looking at just English and Welsh constituencies, he predicted that 421 out of the 574 would have voted Leave. (Our count includes Scotland and Northern Ireland as well.) [...]
Obviously people vote on many issues in a general election, not just one. But it does suggest that a Labour party with a manifesto commitment to reversing Brexit might have a stuggle winning these vital seats. That’s especially true if a snap election is called in the next six months or so – before any likely economic effects of Brexit on jobs, housing and the cost of living have really kicked in.
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