Pound slides sharply against the US Dollar as polls shows voters are leaning towards Brexit
Financial jitters as Brexiteers push ahead with less than a month to go before the EU referendum
POLLS showing the Leave campaign ahead in the EU referendum have caused financial jitters with the pound falling sharply against the US dollar.
In the surveys, which were carried out over the bank holiday weekend, ICM found Brexit leading by 52% to 48%.
Boris Johnson is a very influential figure in the Leave campaign and the polls suggest his battle bus tour of Britain is working
With less than a month to go before the day of the EU referendum on June 23 the polls suggest public opinion has shifted towards Brexit.
Sterling fell within minutes of the results being published this afternoon.
It comes just over two weeks after the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, warned Brexit could wipe 20% off the value of sterling.
Back in February when the then Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced he was going to campaign for Brexit the pound hit a seven-year-low against the dollar.
And last November Bank of America issued a stark warning saying if Britain left the EU it would cause a run on the pound and investors would leave in droves.
The ICM poll was carried out for and, speaking to the paper, the polling company’s director Martin Boon said: “Our poll rather unhinges a few accepted orthodoxies.
“It is only one poll, but in a rather unexpected reverse of polling assumptions so far, both our phone poll and our online poll are consistent on both vote intentions and on the EU referendum.”
ICM asked more than 1,000 adults for the phone survey, with 45% saying they favoured leaving the EU, and 42% opting to remain.
There were 13% who said they did not know and once they were excluded, pollsters were left with 52% in favour of Brexit, against 48% for remain.
Using online polling, 47% said they would like to leave, 44% remain and 9% don’t knows.
Once the undecideds were removed the result was the same as the phone poll, with 52-48 in favour of leaving.
Mr Boon said the polling also suggested the turnout for the referendum is likely to be high.
When asked how likely they were to vote on June 23, the majority of people gave a score of 10 out of 10.
He said this puts the turnout at 60 to 62%.
This is just slightly lower than the turnout for last year’s general election, which was 66.1%.