World
British referendum ‘too close to call’, say opinion polls
London: Britain’s referendum on leaving the European Union (EU) is “too close to call” as a string of polls showed neither ‘ayes’ nor ‘noes’ clearly ahead.
Four separate polls released on Thursday gave differing pictures, with two putting the ‘Leave’ campaign ahead and two giving the pro-EU ‘Remain’ side the lead, The Telegraph reported.
Britons on Thursday morning went to the polls to cast their ballots in the historic referendum. An estimated 46,499,537 people are entitled to take part in the vote – a record number for a British poll.
The result will be decided which campaign gets most supporters and how floating voters divide, according to polling experts.
Around one in 10 voters remains undecided despite months of campaigning and could only decide when he enters the polling booth.
Older voters are more likely to back Brexit, with almost twice as many people aged over 65 set to vote for leaving the EU than those under 35.
There were also signs that those backing Brexit (the common term used for Britain’s exit) are more energised to vote, with the ‘Out’ campaign given a seven-point lead by one poll.
Britain’s most trusted polling expert said there was little sign of the swing back towards staying in the EU that had been expected in the last week.
Professor John Curtice, President of the British Polling Council whose exit poll at the 2015 general election revealed the Conservatives would win a majority, said there was little gap between the sides.
“(Remain) has grabbed some of the ground that it seemed to have lost in last week’s polls — but it’s certainly not grabbed back all of the ground,” he told BBC Two’s Daily Politics programme.
He added that “so far at least there isn’t any clear evidence” of the swing back to the ‘Remain’ vote.
The new polls suggest that trends in recent months remain unchanged as Britain votes in what has been dubbed the biggest decision the country will take for a generation.
Opinium Research’s final poll before the referendum, which asked around 3,000 people for their views, put ‘Leave’ on 45 per cent and ‘Remain’ on 44 per cent.
Adam Drummond, a polling analyst for the company, said: “This really is ‘too close to call’ territory with undecided voters holding the balance of the vote in their hands.”
However, two polls released on Wednesday evening put the In campaign ahead. YouGov put ‘Remain’ on 51 per cent and ‘Leave’ on 49 per cent, while ComRes had the numbers at 54 and 46 – an eight-point in lead.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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