Fixed, Crystallising or diverging: Attitude formation and change in the run-up to Brexit

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Attitudes towards immigration and the economy were considered to be major drivers of the vote choice in the EU Referendum, as were issues of sovereignty and 'taking back control'. Theresa May has announced that she intends to trigger Article 50 in March 2017, meaning that Britain will be expected to leave the European Union by the summer of 2019. The government has also expressed clear intention to keep faith with the electorate, and will want to ensure that the post-Brexit immigration system and economic strategy meet with public approval.Yet voter preferences are going to be challenging to translate into policy. Public opinion is highly diverse: as well as varying across different sections of the public, some attitudes may be held more firmly than others and thus represent a real constraint on policy-making. Expectations and consequences are likely to shift as the negotiations proceed or as new information becomes available. Citizens may be willing to allow trade-offs, for example accepting a certain level of immigration as a cost worth paying in order to keep trading options open. On the other hand there may be 'red lines' which sections of the public will not be prepared to cross. As well as looking at the public's preferences and expectations about outcomes, it is of considerable interest to look at the extent of knowledge about the actual situation. Attitudes towards immigration are largely contingent on perceived threat which in turn relies on perceptions of the number of immigrants. Yet public 'innumeracy' in estimating the number of immigrants has been consistently demonstrated. Knowledge is also likely to be of policy relevance since government might wish to make efforts to improve public understanding of some key issues. Our research aim is to provide high quality evidence on the aspects of public opinion that policy-makers will want to understand. We focus on three main research objectives. Firstly, we will examine the detailed structure of public attitudes and opinion, including willingness to make trade-offs, the degree to which there is regional variation, and understanding the policy areas in which people will accept supranational governance. Secondly, we seek to understand the dynamics of change in attitudes and expectations. To what extent are individual opinions on Brexit-related matters 'set in stone'? We are interested in patterns of change, whether we find convergence over time or divergence and polarization between different segments of the population. We may find a crystallization of attitudes and identities over time, or a blurring of identity boundaries as the complexities of the negotiations become apparent. Thirdly, we seek to understand the drivers of changing attitudes, and the role played by individual factors (e.g. social class), social identities (e.g. Brexiteer), and contextual factors (e.g. macro-economic changes).To address these research questions, we will conduct a new survey, in the form of an internet panel. Internet panels have the major advantage of being quick in terms of the data collection process, and we aim to do six rounds of data collection over the 18-month project period. Panel members will be approached every three months with an online questionnaire made up of a mix of new questions (in response to political and economic events) and old (allowing us to measure how attitudes of individuals have changed). Our panel will be refreshed with new respondents in each round in order to keep the sample size at the required levels (around 3,000 per wave). We will publish short reports every quarter aimed at policy-makers. We also intend to run regular workshops with policy makers at regular intervals throughout the project so that we can have continual expert inputs about what policy makers need to know. We expect our results to be of great interest to policy makers, including bodies such as think tanks, as well as to the general public.