by John Curtice, Patrick English, Stephen Fisher and Eilidh Macfarlane.

Even though the votes have yet to be counted, the Conservatives and Labour already seem to be undertaking their own post-mortems of what promises to be poor results for both of them in the European Parliamentary elections. Within the Conservative party there is a lively debate taking place about whether or not in the wake of the anticipated success of the Brexit Party, Tories could and should embrace at least the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal. Meanwhile, Labour, anticipating perhaps that the party has lost votes to others whom have adopted a clearer position on Brexit, looks as though it is about to consider the possibility of coming out more firmly in favour of some kind of public ballot.

Doubtless, all sides in this debate will look to the pattern of the results on Sunday for evidence to support their view of what their party should do. There has already been some speculation that the pattern of reported turnout in this election (information about which has already been released by some councils) suggests that voters in more Remain-inclined areas were more likely to turn out to vote, indicating perhaps a new determination among anti-Brexit voters to express their views at the ballot box. Meanwhile, we can anticipate that the results themselves will be poured over for evidence that the Conservatives or Labour have lost ground more in Remain-voting areas than Leave-inclined ones or vice-versa. However, in both instances caution will be required in interpreting the evidence when the full panoply of results is unveiled on Sunday night.

Turnout

First of all, we consider the evidence on turnout. Two patterns can be observed in the data available so far. (Our evidence comes from the figures for 143 councils where the data have been collected by Matt Singh and/or Patrick Heneghan.) The first is that turnout appears to be up by a couple of points or so on 2014, and thus may well be a little above the average for previous Euro-elections. The second is that turnout appears to have increased more in those areas where a majority of voters backed Remain in 2016 than it has in those places where Leave were most popular.

Two notes of caution about the data on turnout are in order. The first is that the figures on turnout released so far are based on the total votes cast, including votes that might eventually be deemed invalid; turnout is conventionally calculated in the UK on the basis of the total number of valid votes cast, that is, excluding those votes which are deemed to be invalid. These amounted to 0.5% of all votes cast in 2014, enough to reduce the turnout as conventionally calculated by 0.2%. So even if the figures released to date prove to be representative, any increase in turnout is likely to prove a little less than has been reported so far.

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