Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1192401
IT'S a funny world we live in. Until a few weeks ago, social media sites like Facebook were awash with memes and polls suggesting that the people of Great Britain had rued their 2016 decision to leave the EU. If a second referendum were held today (we were told around a month ago) Remain would win with a majority of anywhere up to two-thirds. As for Boris Johnson, he was reportedly so terrified of facing the press that he even 'hid in the fridge' to avoid an inter- view with Piers Morgan... And then, the inevitable col- lision with reality. Last Friday, the party promising 'Hard Brexit' won a general elec- tion with the largest majority since the 1980s. It was the first opportunity the British voting public had to confirm or deny the 2016 referendum result; and the outcome speaks for itself. There has very clearly been no change of heart on the subject of EU membership among the broader British population. On the contrary, the decision to leave has been emphatically reaffirmed. And this should not really surprise us, either; for even as bogus polls and outrageous claims did their best to distort the reality on the ground, there were very reliable indicators that Boris Johnson's Conservatives were actually cruising towards a comfortable win all along. YouGov, Survation, IPSOS and ICM opinion polls had all accurately predicted the basic election result (i.e., a win for the Conservatives), while returning varying margins of victory. How, then, did so many people expect (or at least, realistically hope for) a differ- ent result? I am tempted to answer that with a single word – 'Facebook' – but that would probably be an exaggeration. There are, af- ter all, other social media sites such as Instagram and Twit- ter; and what they all have in common is an overwhelming tendency to mistake opinions for facts, and vice versa. Obviously there are parallels with the local political situa- tion… but I'll leave you to work them out for yourselves. What interests me more right now are the precise mechanics of how a minority seems to have somehow convinced itself that it had turned the tables on the majority… even in the face of hard-boiled evidence to the contrary. Those polls, for instance. While four (4) independent pollsters were busy using tried- and-tested methodologies to gauge public opinion in the UK – and (surprise, surprise) getting it right – other people were engaging in tortuous ex- ercises in wishful thinking. One such exercise involved extrapolating a different result for the 2016 Brexit referen- dum, on the basis of: what would have happened had the youth vote been higher? The syllogism at work here seems to have been built on two premises: a) of the 18-25 age bracket that actually voted, the overwhelming majority voted to remain in the EU; b) the same age bracket also regis- tered the lowest voter turnout of all the other demographic groupings. Consequently, by simply increasing the youth voter turnout in an imaginary refer- endum, the result could very easily be overturned. It was as classic a case of 'If only' as you are ever likely to see: 'If only more young people actually bothered voting… we would have won.' Erm… do I even need to point out the main flaws in that reasoning? There are at least two that immediately leap to the eye. One: it doesn't necessarily fol- low that the rest of the 18-25 age bracket would also have voted to remain, if they voted at all. It could just as easily be that those who voted consti- tuted a minority among their coevals… with the vast major- ity just not giving a toss either way. Two: there was never any reason to suppose that a sec- ond referendum would attract a larger contingent of young voters than the first. And this goes for the election, too. It is too early to break down the precise voter segments in last Thursday's vote… but I'm willing to bet that the youth 22 OPINION maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 DECEMBER 2019 Raphael Vassallo That social media bubble again...