I would have loved to have predicted the Brexit vote with confidence. But I didn’t. Instead I predicted a 52-48 win for Remain.
However, I did repeatedly warn (to no avail) to Matt Singh and others counting on “history”, that counting on history was a bad idea.
Comments Ahead of the Vote
In my final post before the vote I noted Last Four Brexit Polls Split: Turnout of Age 18-35 Likely the Key.
Turnout was indeed the key, but I also questioned the methodology of the latest polls.
Likelihood to Vote
In ORB’s final poll, not only did the likelihood of the two most likely age groups to vote Remain rise dramatically, the likelihood of the most likely age group to vote Leave fell.
On top of that, ORB imputed a 3-1 advantage for Remain on most undecided voters, leaving a mere 2% truly “undecided”.
What Happened?
What happened is all the polls that got it wrong last time, changed their methodology in belief that Matt Singh, was the latest all-knowing God, just as Nate Silver was in the US.
Neither Nate Silver, nor Matt Singh responded to numerous emails or Tweets. My Tweets to Singh were not combative (until after vote), and in many cases I simply asked polite questions because I did not understand his methods or terminology.
That ORB poll was ridiculous. I called it at the time. Undecideds suddenly became a 3-1 favorite for Remain, based on “history”.
Both Nate Silver and Matt Singh had more faith in history than changes in attitudes.
My mistake, and I made one, was believing pollsters at the end, when it was clear they changed their methodology to accommodate history, just as Matt Singh, like Nate Silver before him did.
At any rate, I take pride in pointing out the odds were much closer than the pollsters and the likes of those counting on history had you believe.
Anyone confident of victory and was correct, went out on a limb. No one knew this outcome. Anyone whom tells you they did know the outcome is a fool or a charlatan.
That said, I do get to gloat on one thing: my repeated calls that the odds were way wrong and those who had faith in the betting odds bookies offered and Matt Singh verified were way wrong.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
As they say, there’s only one poll that matters.
Everything else is superstition. May as well read goat entrails.
Well let’s just say Propagandists can’t pervert “history” to achieve their wicked ends…. they way they want it to do….every time.
This Brexit from the EU is very much in line with England’s history of escaping European powers (see the Reformation and Henry VIII).
It seems so real. Compared to what?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MzvlivbptXk
Don’t apologize, Mish, we still love you…
The only odds I believe in come from Damon Runyon via Harry the Horse: “All of life is 7 to 5 Against…”
Bill >
Mish the polls got it right until they hit the ‘Jo Cox’ moment, at that point the talking heads and politicos all flip flopped as they didn’t want to be seen to stand for a lone nutter and/or couldn’t distance themselves adequately. The pollsters also were drawing views from the wrong areas (very London centric and also ‘liberal’ centric).
The ‘little people’ on the other hand held true to their beliefs and voted as they intended to vote giving the result as it was.
The Scottish vote (I’m Scots) was skewed due to the number of people who are socialist leaning (SNP, Labour and Liberal) which makes up 75% of the voting population in Scotland and whom tend to follow the direction set by their parties.
My wife was worried about voting out given everyone she knew and also on fbook etc were all remain, but as she had discussed with me, the ‘remain camp’ arguments, like a lot of the leave arguments were either untrue or unrepresentative and when she queried remain supporters on it they could not give logical answers.
Although I am an independence supporter (as is the wife), we would not vote for the SNP after independence as they do not represent our views and I suspect a lot of other Scots are the same and this is why Nicola Sturgeon may hold off in calling a referendum, as the SNP would likely not be able to form a majority or minority government post referendum.
May as well flip a coin to make a prediction; I think it would be about as accurate as pollsters.
The individuals making the predictions have a bias. They desire an outcome and want to be accepted by the other shills. Accuracy and honesty is not an objective.
I believe it’s even worse. The pollsters are paid by powerful interests to sway the vote. ex. If Brexit is sure reported to be a certain loss, many people won’t bother to show up and vote. The poll results become a self-fulfilling prophecy..
It’s the social application of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: the observer influences the experiment. This is the underlying reason why polls are corrupt.
Politics and science are mutually-exclusive. Politics has no interest in discovering the truth, only manufacturing a desired outcome.
Bad day for Mr. Market. Any margin calls being made to undercapitalized banks? Fed going to need to step in and sell some insurance company to BOFA? The next few days should show us if this is just a temporary setback or the first step off the cliff.
Why am I so happy to see the market drop?
Smith and Wesson did great today!
Just go long the ammo too and everything will be fine.
Anytime Congress thinks sitting down to prevent anything from being done period is bad for the markets just hasn’t ever been to West Philly.
Yep, on Monday the layoffs will begin. The first will be in the public services for the serfs and then? Yes, let the beating continue until the serfs admit their foolish mistake. Oh they’ll promise everything will return to normal but the new normal.
I was wondering since the serfs in once Great Britain are no longer going to fallow the path of the liberal neo-conns when is the New Amerika going bomb and invade?
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/06/the-reversebrexit-campaign-began.html
This song reminds me of what a waits the citizens of GB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrfhf1Gv4Tw
In the long run you won’t be wrong
Polls, speculation, articles are a waste of time. They are just institutions, media and people trying to sell news and stay in the public awareness. What a waste of energy and time to be speculating and discussing what might happen. Prepare for all options, let it happen, act accordingly. Meanwhile… GET A LIFE!
In the Brit papers, much was made about Scotland’s part in this— Scotland voted very strongly in favor of remain. Many suggested another vote for Scots independence might take place.
Gotta say I truly enjoyed the Brits sticking their thumb in Merkel’s eye. Any stick thrown into the EU’s machinery is a positive. Maybe, just maybe, the powers that be might listen.
Next up: Espana throws out ECB stooge Rajoy. Independent Catalonia ? Can’t wait for the derivitaves to blow when that one gives way.
Tiger or Panther as best Tanks of WW2?
T-34. “Quantity has a quality all its own”.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-soviet-t-34-the-lethal-tank-won-world-war-ii-13889
Yes, congrats to the Brits. They stood up for themselves and set a good example.
Could it be that one need not “destroy the village in order to save it”?
Now the rest of the EU villages will need to likewise save themselves.
I wonder if people are lying to the pollsters? … For what reason I’m not sure… perhaps because they don’t want to be categorized as someone who supports an unpopular position?
I believe the memory of what the unelected nannycrats in Brussels did to their vaccuum cleaners through banana’s came to mind when the next target was their tea kettles and toasters. A uninified “Hell No” was heard across the land!
Martin Armstrong as usual correctly predicted the vote well in advance.
Wayalat got it right! Armstrong always has a “but”, and is dead wrong on gold.
The people of Britain got it right, and that is the important part.
They have declared war on abuse, and we should all rejoice and join in the effort.
“Armstrong always has a “but”, and is dead wrong on gold.”
The gold bugs were dead wrong on gold. Armstrong said gold would decline into his benchmarks, which is what happened. Armstrong expects gold to rise to new nominal highs. Armstrong said gold did not make a new annual low last year, but could make an intra year low that could take the price down to XXX, thus people should not get in a frenzy over gold just yet.
Armstrong recently mentioned Soros and his proclamation of buying gold. Armstrong noted that someone like Soros, announces their holdings, when they are looking to create a surge of interest for them to sell into. Bag holders wanted.
It’s like when Goldman Sachs tells their Muppet clients to buy XXX, which of coarse, Goldman is selling to their Muppet clients, later saying, oops, bad call Muppets, you should sell it now, at a loss.
Armstrong said the Big Boys wanted him to join the group, but he declined, as he could never trust whether they were trying to set him up to be their bag holder. Instead, Armstrong wound up exposing the 1997 Buffett silver manipulation, for one. In 1997, the price of silver was pumped up, so people like Buffet could sell into the price surge.
Silver then fell to a new low.
Walayat (of Market Oracle) got it right (not sure of his spelling!).
This is a glorious day and a time to rejoice. England has saved the day like they did in 1939. Most can’t see it yet, but this is the tide turning.
As for Armstrong, he always has a “but” somewhere, and has been dead wrong in his hatred of gold which surprises me, because I tend to agree with a lot of the other stuff he says.
People should just make up their own mind and not be so worried about which way the sheep are heading.
“As for Armstrong, he always has a “but” somewhere, and has been dead wrong in his hatred of gold which surprises me, because I tend to agree with a lot of the other stuff he says.”
Armstrong has no hatred of gold. Armstrong has no love of gold promoters, who never see a bad time to buy gold, just like realtors never see a bad time to buy houses. A realtor will happily sell you on a house for $750,000 just before a recession hits and drops the price down to $500,000.
Armstrong does not like to see people suckered into buying gold at $1,800, when it is going down to $1,000. The point of an investment is to make money, not lose money. The gold promoters never told the public not to buy gold at $1,800 as it was over priced at the time.
I am a holder of physical gold. I do that to have an asset which is detached from fiat currencies. We are less than 45 years into an experiment with fiat currencies anchored to absolutely nothing. I don’t think it will have a happy outcome, and I am sure they will not ring a bell before the lot collapses.
Thus gold when moronic reserve banks print with gay abandon.
You might wake up one day to a completely different scenario, that day I want to be in gold.
Armstrong thinks like a trader and his calls on gold have not been right in the past. I am at a loss to see why they should be in the future.
And chartists, statistics-watchers and market technicians too operate on the assumption that what has happened before will happen again…or that simply because two lines on a chart follow the same pattern there is causation or a connexion.
There is a garbage culture out there, where we pour garbage on people. Then the pollsters run around and take a poll and say, do you smell anything? Bob Woodward
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/bobwoodwar290016.html?src=t_poll
Since when are asset bubbles something new? When the music is playing everyone wants to be on the dance floor. What happens when the music stops? There’s supposed to be a magical TRILLION dollars waiting that will make…well, only the select few…whole again.
Everyone else gets stuck with the bill.
With interest.
And no gun…
That would be you in case you’re wondering….
Since when did I say anything about asset bubbles?
I got it right and placed my bet to leave about three months ago.
It is not over the Oligarchs will not allow this to stand. *uck the will of the people!
Nate and Matt should start a new poll-aggregation outfit call the Silver, Matt, Singh, Nate Inc!
“We always get it right – whenever things fall our way!” 🙂
Very scary times ahead.
A time when those who have cultivated calm minds and have reasoning intelligence can make good money (in the free markets).
Scary as in “starting your own business” kind of way. People have been packed in cotton wool and told for generations not to worry not to think, the state will sort it out. This is like a prisoner being released. A brave new world awaits, with opportunities and challenges, but a far cry better than 24 hour incarceration!
And it will start something new, worldwide!
I called Brexit correctly.
I live in a relatively poor town in the north of England where the vast majority of voters would vote out. Not a single person that I know received a voting card. This in turn caused some confusion as some people thought they could not vote without a card and also some people did not know where to vote as the card gives you the address of your polling station. I went to the station without a card, gave my name and address and was on the list and so allowed to cast my vote but others where not so fortunate. A number of people were turned away as they where not on the list and they had no idea where to go. Some people had been to several polling stations and turned away. However in the end my town managed to vote 68% for out.
That early 19% Brexit poll, a big outlier, made me think that Brexit was the trend and that something was happening under the surface.
The lesson here is “DATA-DRIVEN” should not be elevated to god-like status. Polls or Econ Stats, same thing. If you cannot get a simple election right based on polling data, then why should you think that similarly gathered and crunched data is a good basis for Central Planning Poliburos like the FED to manage large, complex economies encompassing many diverse regions?
If to save election expenses we relied on polls, then it might have been Remain as the selection of the Ruling Central Committee. I see econ stats as being the same way, with the FED decreeing that based on data we have this interest rate rather than letting the free market arrive at an answer. Why let polls/stats replace free elections and free markets?
Mish, you couldn’t predict Brexit any better than you could predict heads or tails, because that is what happened Thursday. A random last-minute change in a few unfathomable parameters (e.g. rain/sunshine, level of flu, a fortunate/unfortunate statement by Juncker or Merkel or Farrage), and the result could have been your prediction. The real result has been not a purposeful, determined country, but an essentially divided one.
If anything, history won.
The cycles of history repeat. Way back in ancient times, it was written in Ecclesiastes, that there was nothing new under the sun.
Even if Brexit had failed, the problems that lead to the referendum would not have gone away. Two countries that were looking toward joining the EU, had already changed their mind. France and Italy are wanting a referendum, as well.