This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
EU referendum results: pound plunges as first results come in – live
EU referendum live: pound plunges as first results come in
(35 minutes later)
12.25am BST
12.58am BST
00:25
00:58
Mark Tran
The Swindon result has been announced.
In Wandsworth, Rosena Allin-Khan, who succeeded Sadiq Khan, as Labour MP for Tooting, is predicting a 65-35 margin of victory in her constituency.
Remain: 51,220 (45.3%)
“It’s looking good from the sampling,” she told the Guardian. Right on cue, an official with a sampling sheet came over showing 75 votes for remain and 17 for leave. Earlier, a Tory campaigner in Putney predicted a 60-40 margin of victory in his constituency. All three MPs in Wandsworth – Allin-Khan, Justine Greening, the international development secretary and MP for Putney, and Jane Ellison, the Conservative MP for Battersea – have campaigned for remain. Wandsworth is strong remain territory and the only question is the margin of victory.
Leave: 61,745 (54.7%)
Allin-Khan said she found some confusion among remain voters because the government had been so “woefully divided”. Labour voters by contrast felt Jeremy Corbyn had been vocal about remain.
This looks like a hefty leave win but, according to the Hanretty data, leave should have been doing slightly better here.
Labour MP Ronena Allin-Khan at count in Wandsworth: "It's looking good" for Remain #EUreferendum pic.twitter.com/u8QOu0APAq
Updated
12.23am BST
at 12.59am BST
00:23
12.55am BST
With 5 results in out of 382 in the EU referendum, turnout is 67.21%.
00:55
12.22am BST
12.55am BST
00:22
00:55
The Leave victory in Sunderland has sent the pound plunging, down 3.5% to $1.435.
Arron Banks, the co-founder of Leave.EU, has described the Sunderland result (see 12.20am) as a “wholesale rejection of the Labour party by its voters.”
Sunderland in graph format #EUref pic.twitter.com/eqNW6MMkSV
12.54am BST
Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital said: “The pound is plummeting as Sunderland votes heavily for Leave. Markets are very nervy at the moment as the polls – and the markets - could be wrong. The Sunderland result has definitely altered the tone of the evening and markets are getting very choppy.”
00:54
12.21am BST
In Wandsworth, Mark Tran reports a turnout of 71.98% – or 158,018 out of 219,521 voters.
00:21
12.52am BST
00:52
Randeep Ramesh
Randeep Ramesh
Count halted in Bristol after fire alarm set off. Counting officer sent out staff. Vote Leave joke about being worried about what will happen to their ballot papers. It’s a false alarm.
In Bristol Marvin Rees, the newly elected mayor of the city, told the Guardian that the “Brexit campaign has exposed the fragility at the heart of the system”.
Count halted in #bristol #euref after fire alarm set off pic.twitter.com/8BaRVV2XX7
He added: “We have people vulnerable to people coming along singing a simple tune. We have to change the way we do public services. We are not sharing the prosperity. We need to deliver the change that people need. We need a city that people can afford to live in.” Rees said that this was not just a message to the Labour leadership but “for everyone”.
12.20am BST
Bristol’s polling officials said that of the 58,000 postal votes, the city has recorded a 90.8% turnout. That’s a record.
00:20
#bristol mayor @MarvinJRees: #brexit campaign exposed fragility at heart of system. We are not sharing prosperity. pic.twitter.com/MXhtrXWXvG
Leave win in Sunderland by more than expected
12.51am BST
Leave have won a big victory in Sunderland.
00:51
Remain: 51,930 (61%)
These are from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
Leave: 82,394 (39%)
Hear Remain might be as high as 83% in Lewisham - we going to see London v the rest of the country?
Leave were expected to win here, according to the Hanretty figures, but not by a margin as big as this. It looks as if the early Remain optimism was premature.
Foyle, N Ireland, 78% Remain, 22% Leave
12.20am BST
Lewisham was expected to vote Remain, by a margin of roughly two to one. According to both the Hanretty measure and the Sky News index (see 10.12pm), it is one of the 50 most pro-EU areas in the country.
00:20
12.49am BST
The SNP’s Humza Yousaf says he is “quietly optimistic” of a vote to remain.
00:49
12.19am BST
Josh Halliday
00:19
Bridget Phillipson, the Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South, said she is “naturally disappointed” with the result but says it reflects the “real sense of anger” in the region about low wages and other issues.
12.16am BST
00:16
Ben Quinn
Voters in some areas have been claiming that they were turned away from polling booths after being told their names were not on the register, despite having seemingly registered weeks ago.
Becky Timmons told the Guardian that she and her husband received polling cards after registering in September, but only he was able to vote.
“When I went along and said my name and address they said that I was not on the list,” said Timmons, from Campton, Bedfordshire. “Then the official said: ‘Oh, we have actually had three other people like this, so let us check.’ They phoned up the council but I was still unable to vote. Then she suggested it was some sort of computer error.
“It made me quite cross. If there were four that happened in our local village then you wonder if it was part of a nationwide thing.”
Kieran Robertson, in North Oxfordshire, said he had registered online to vote on 28 May and had received an email confirming he was registered. After checking and rechecking with the council earlier this week he turned up at his local polling station and was told that he was not able to vote.
“It seems like the national computer system went fine but when that tried to send the details to the council system something went wrong and nobody was informed,” said Robertson, who said he will complain. “It leaves you thinking about our status as a democracy. I have not been able to vote, which means that we are not a democracy in some ways.”
A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission said that it was not aware of any major problems being reported in relation to voting.
12.12am BST
00:12
Farage says Eurosceptics 'winning the war', even if they do not win tonight.
Here are the key quotes from Nigel Farage.
I have to say, it has been a long campaign - in my case 25 years. And whatever happens tonight, whoever wins this battle, one thing I am completely certain of is that we are winning this war. Euroscepticism was considered to be fringey, fruitcakey, to quote the prime minister, and now it looks like tonight maybe just under half, maybe just over half the country, is going to vote for us to leave the European Union ...
The Eurosceptic genie is out of the bottle - and it will now not be put back.
But, perhaps even more remarkably the biggest change from this referendum is not what has happened in the United Kingdom. It is what has happened across the rest of the European Union. We now see in Denmark, in the Netherlands and even in Italy up to about 50% of those populations want to leave the European Union.
I hope and pray that my sense of this tonight is wrong. And my sense of this - and no, I’m not conceding - is that the government’s registration scheme, getting 2m voters on, a 48-hour extension, is maybe what tipped the balance. I hope I’m wrong.
12.12am BST
00:12
As we await the results, here are two snapshots from two different post-vote events in London.
12.07am BST
00:07
This is how sterling reacted to the Newcastle news:
Massive market moves on that Newcastle result: GBP/USD traded 200 points lower (2c) than tonight's high. #EUref pic.twitter.com/7nxWTnG2K8
12.05am BST
00:05
Deborah Mattinson
Deborah Mattinson is asking how a divided Britain can heal itself after the EU referendum.
The EU Referendum campaign may not have clarified all the issues in voters’ minds, but it has shone a light on a growing chasm in the country. People divided by geography, social class, age, education and income are even more sharply divided by outlook. Whether to remain in the EU or leave is just one of many of those differences. Whatever the outcome on Thursday, it is unlikely to heal our fractured nation.
Related: How can we heal a nation divided by the referendum?
12.05am BST
00:05
Remain win in Newcastle, but by less than expected
The Newcastle-upon-Tyne result is in.
Remain: 65,404 (50.7%)
Leave: 63,598 (49.3%)
This is a very good result for leave. According to the Hanretty figures, remain were expected to be comfortably ahead. (see 10.22pm.)
And here is a video from the announcement:
Updated
Updated
at 12.12am BST
at 12.49am BST
12.01am BST
12.46am BST
00:01
00:46
Libby Brooks
John Redwood, the Conservative pro-Brexit MP, has just told Sky News that a fall in the value of the pound is not necessarily something to worry about. If it falls too much in value, people will start buying it again, he said.
With the ballot sampling under way, a pattern is now emerging in Glasgow, with middle-class areas voting decisively to remain while working-class areas like the east end are neck and neck with leave.
12.45am BST
Estimates of turnout around the country are solidifying around 70% – higher than last month’s Scottish parliament elections but less than the 2014 independence referendum. Turnout in Scotland looks like being a wee bit less than England but, having urged the electorate to the polling booths four times in the last three years, this is no great surprise.
00:45
I’m also told to look out for surprisingly high leave votes in solid SNP areas like Dundee and Inverclyde; perhaps prompting some soul-searching for the party’s high command.
I’m told sampling from the boxes in Hastings suggests leave is on 50.6%, and remain is on 49.4%. Leave were expected to be ahead here, but by more than this.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, Ian Murray MP and SNP MP Anne McLaughlin at the Glasgow count pic.twitter.com/mhq4W1TtRt
12.44am BST
11.58pm BST
00:44
23:58
Steven Morris
Jill Treanor
Cardiff South and Penarth Labour MP Stephen Doughty is cheerful about the chances of the Welsh capital returning a healthy Remain vote. He said he had been joined on the campaign trail on voting day by people who had never been actively engaged in politics before.
Sterling has slipped back from its highs against the dollar on talk that the Newcastle result will only be a marginal win for Remain, while Sunderland is said to be strongly leave. The pound is now at $1.4897, having earlier hit $1.5018.
“People were saying they wouldn’t forgive themselves if they did nothing and the country voted to leave.” But it’s in places like the valleys town of Merthyr Tydfil where the remain vote could be in trouble. Turnout there was 67% – it was 53% at the last general election.
If Leave really win Sunderland by 20% and Remain win Newcastle by only small margin, upset back on the table.
Cardiff South and Penarth MP Stephen Doughty at the count on the Welsh capital. pic.twitter.com/ar7hHCUcO7
My colleague Jill Treanor is on the trading floor at currency trader WorldFirst. Its chief economist and head of currency strategy Jeremy Cook said: “These markets are so thin, so skittish, [the pound] could really come off on any thing.”
More big turnouts in Wales:
There is some chat that hedge funds had been doing their private polling to get one step ahead of the market. Cook too has heard about hedge fund exit polls and apparently people were being asked how they’d voted by financial analysts in some constituencies. “If a hedge fund had a scent of something sterling would have been hit a lot harder,” Cook says. A veteran of late night election campaigns, Cook says this is the classic time for rumours to start while count comes in. “If a hedge fund had a scent the market had mispriced this and a leave vote was likely sterling would be a lower than this”.
In Blaenau Gwent it was 68.1% (58% at the general election). In Ynys Mon (Anglesey) it was 73.8% (69.9% at general election).
Updated
Updated
at 11.59pm BST
at 12.48am BST
11.54pm BST
12.41am BST
23:54
00:41
The latest reports from Sunderland suggest (contrary to earlier claims) that Leave is heading for a big win.
Richard Adams
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg says Leave could be on 62%.
Here is an interesting tweet from the Higher Education Policy Institute, which has looked closely at student voting patterns.
Laura K has a source that says Sunderland could be 62% Leave
It’s headed by Nick Hillman, a former Conservative candidate and special advisor, who says the BBC’s analysis of student voting is “incomplete”:
This is from Matthew Goodwin.
Lots of tonight's analysis is ignoring that it is university holidays, so students not generally at their term-time address. #EUref
Hearing early indications of 66% Leave vote in Sunderland which would be a strong result for them. In models it's predicted to be 53% #euref
That means student votes are likely to be distributed in their home authorities rather than their university ones – which could help explain the disappointing remain performance in Newcastle.
And this is from Glen O’Hara, another academic.
Updated
A very bad result for #Remain in Sunderland might not be catastrophic. We may just be more divided than we thought. But it isn't good.
at 12.43am BST
And this is from the BBC’s Richard Moss.
12.40am BST
One set of counted votes in Sunderland #EUref. Leave piles generally bigger but by how much? pic.twitter.com/ARg5XXvGQ4
00:40
This is from the Press Association’s Ian Jones.
50 of the 382 voting areas have now reported turnout, and the average is 71%. #EURef
12.40am BST
00:40
Steven Morris
Speculation is growing in Wales that there are going be some handsome wins for leave in parts of the south valleys. For the moment, Alun Cairns, secretary of state for Wales (and remain supporter), is not being drawn in. He has been arguing at the count in Cardiff that no matter the result this is a good day for democracy. He is also keen to remind us that the Tories have delivered a manifesto promise. He also says, just like in a general election campaign, whoever wins the argument over the economy is likely to carry the day. As to the result in Wales? Too early to say.
Sec state for Wales Alun Cairns. https://t.co/Htp2tgbtTO
Updated
at 12.43am BST
12.37am BST
00:37
Henry McDonald
The leave campaign’s regional coordinator in Northern Ireland is holding on to the hope that working-class voters across the UK will turn around the Brexit camp’s fortunes. Lee Reynolds, a former Democratic Unionist party councillor, said there had been an unprecedented turnout in Ulster loyalist working-class areas.
“They are not voting in any large numbers for remain,” Reynolds said. “If the loyalist working class are voting like never before then what are their counterparts doing in England and like them, the English working class is for leave. People have to came calm down and let the votes be counted. I think the odds are even in terms of which side is going to be on the 52-48 split in the vote. It is far from over.”
