Kalyeena Makortoff
CNBC
Nearly half of Brexit supporters believe this week’s referendum will be rigged, while almost a third think Britain’s security service is conspiring to avoid the U.K. leaving Europe, new polls show.
A YouGov poll commissioned by London-based radio station LBC surveyed 1656 adults in Great Britain on June 13 and 14 to explore some of the more prevalent conspiracy theories around the referendum.
Their answers were then sub-divided based on whether respondents said they would vote to leave, remain or were still undecided.
Overall, 28 percent of respondents said it was “probably true” that the EU referendum was likely to be rigged, while 45 percent it was probably false. But once leave voters’ responses were isolated, 46 percent said they believed the ballot would be rigged.
When asked whether the U.K.’s domestic security service MI5 was working with the UK government to try and stop Britain from leaving the EU, leave voters were quite evenly split — with 28 percent saying it was probably true, 33 percent saying it was probably false and 39 percent saying they didn’t know.
Meanwhile, nearly half of all voters believe there are plans for further EU integration and enlargement that are deliberately being withheld until after the referendum, with 49 percent saying it was probably true. That number jumped to 75 percent once accounting for only vote leave supporters.
There will be no official exit polls from the referendum, leaving the world to wait until ballots have been counted. However, a small proportion have speculated that the U.K. broadcasters BBC and ITN held back from commissioning exit polls in order to allow the vote to be fixed without anyone telling, with 15 percent of all respondents in the YouGov poll saying it was probably true, while 44 percent said it was probably false.
That’s versus 22 percent of leave voters who say it is likely true and 10 percent of remain supporters.
Voting in the U.K. referendum will run from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. London time Thursday, June 23.
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http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/nearly-half-of-brexit-supporters-think-the-referendum-is-rigged.html