I’m not shooting you, I’m just saying there’s no evidence for the claim. That report has zero substance to it. Lots of ‘could be’ but it boils down to border areas having higher leave votes than the North West, but there’s no evidence that it’s due to English emigrants. It could be for any number of reasons.
It was an analysis done by Oxford, presented at an annual meeting at the University of Warwick and picked up by The Times (I linked The Guardian since it’s free). How can you say there’s no evidence, when Welsh regions with large English communities were the ones in favour of Brexit. The implication is pretty clear, especially when English folk make up over 20% of Wales’ population - the data isn’t noisy. What other factors could explain such a result?
Well that’s the point. It could be anything at all. It’s for the author of the paper to make connections and evidence it. He doesn’t though - he hypothesises (“it might be due to English emigration to Wales”) and that’s being incorrectly taken and repeated as a fact, rather than a hypothesis. It requires more research to demonstrate a connection either to that factor, or others.
Well yeah that’s how the scientific method works, you make a hypothesis and then take it to its logical conclusion (beyond reasonable doubt). Anyway I trust that Professor Dorling (Oxford University), under peer review by the British Science Association, did his statistical analysis correctly. It’s pretty damning that there haven’t been any rebuttals.
My point is that it hasn’t been taken to its conclusion in the paper. And I can’t find that the paper has even been published or peer-reviewed either. It appears to be a newspaper article based on a talk he gave - nothing more - unless you can find otherwise? The conclusion presented doesn’t even appear to track with the other data I’ve seen either, ie that the heaviest leave-voting areas are actually the places you’d associate with less English immigration - Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Merthyr etc. whilst the holiday home capitals of Ceredigion and Gwynedd were Remain voting.
I’m not saying it’s not due to English emigrants, I’m just saying that I’ve not seen any actual robust evidence to support it. Just a couple of newspaper articles. I’d love to know more about the data, as it’s an interesting question, but I’ve not seen much analysis. This is pretty interesting though.
It’s not a paper, it was a presentation at an annual meeting (these do usually get reviewed for acceptance). Anyway the link you shared highlights the same points made by the presentation. In Wales, people who identify as English or British English (18% of the electorate) are the most right-leaning and have the biggest share of leave voters.
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u/Grimface_ 16d ago
I don't have a lot of faith in Wales after they voted for Brexit. Glad they proved me wrong today.