by Stephen Fisher and Alan Renwick.

We offer our condolences to the family and friends of Jo Cox MP. We hope that it is not disrespectful of us to post this updated forecast now that the official campaigns have resumed.

Our polling average now has Remain at 49% after setting aside Don’t Knows.

From this we forecast Remain to get 50% of the vote.

The 95% prediction interval is only a little narrower than ±12 points. So Remain are forecast to win between 39% and 62% of the vote.

The probability that Remain will win the referendum is now 52%.

The methods behind our forecast

The method behind this forecast is based on the historical experience of referendum polls and referendum outcomes in the UK and on the EU elsewhere, as discussed here.

Our polling average is constructed by taking the most recent poll from each company within the last two weeks. If a company uses both phone and online modes then both the most recent phone poll and most recent online poll are used. This applies to BMG, ICM and ORB this week. The current average is based on the results of twelve polls from nine companies, of which six were conducted by phone and six online. All polls are adjusted to account for the tendency for phone polls to be more favourable to Remain. This is done by adding 1.75 to the Remain share for online polls and subtracting the same amount for phone polls.