Social Effects of the Vote of the Majority: An Experiment on the Brexit-Vote

The 2016 EU referendum result was widely perceived as a statement against immigration. This paper investigates whether information about majority voting outcomes influences attitudes toward immigrants. Using a survey experiment conducted in England in 2017–18, we randomly exposed participants to truthful information indicating that local constituencies had predominantly voted either to Leave or to Remain in the 2016 EU referendum. The intervention substantially shifted beliefs about local Brexit vote shares. While we find no statistically significant effects on most individual survey questions, exposure to a Leave-majority signal leads to more restrictive immigration policy preferences relative to exposure to a Remain-majority signal. Effects are concentrated among participants for whom the information was politically dissonant or unexpected. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with a conformity mechanism operating through perceived majority views, suggesting that referenda may continue to shape expressed policy preferences beyond their immediate aftermath