Bristol’s Brexit split

Ashley ward had the UK’s second highest percentage of remain voters in last year’s EU referendum, new data obtained by the BBC has revealed.

Detailed polling results for council wards also reveal the Brexit-split in Bristol.

Across the city, Remain won with 62 per cent of the vote, but localised figures reveal a more complex picture. 

Of the 34 wards in Bristol, 23 voted for Remain.

Ashley, Cotham, and Redland were the strongest in support of remaining in the EU. Meanwhile, Hartcliffe and Withywood, Hengrove and Whitchurch Park, and Filwood, were the wards where leaving the EU drew most support.

There was a 52 per cent difference in the vote share between Ashley, the most strongly in favour of Remain, and Hartcliffe and Withywood, the most strongly in favour of Leave.

Deprivation and social mobility does not explain the markedly different voting patterns across the city.

A 2015 Bristol City Council survey found that Hartcliffe and Withywood suffer from deprivation and lower social mobility; in fact over a half of Hartcliffe and Withywood neighbourhoods appear in a list of the most deprived 10 per cent of areas in England. 

However, Lawrence Hill has a similar number of deprived neighbourhoods as Hartcliffe and Withywood, but had a completely opposite voting pattern; nearly 75 per cent of voters in Lawrence Hill wanted to Remain.

A quality of life report for wards in the same 2015 survey, reveals a clearer divide.

While Ashley residents generally rank their quality of life highly, with multiple indices marking Ashley as more satisfied than the city average, Hartcliffe and Withywood residents do not.

Of the 49 indices, Hartcliffe and Withywood residents mark their quality of life lower than the Bristol average in over a half. Residents from the ward also rank their health worse than anywhere in the city. 

The data also shows that Ashley is younger and multi-cultural than the Bristol average, with a high proportion of residents aged between 25-39 years old and a third from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) backgrounds.

Only five per cent of Hartcliffe and Withywood residents are BME. Lawrence Hill, which on many indices has a similar profile to Hartcliffe and Withywood, has 12 times higher share of BME residents than Hartcliffe and Withywood. 

The BBC survey found a strong correlation between support for Remain and having a university degree.

While no ward by ward surveys are available, a look at Bristol constituencies reveals a similar pattern as that found across the country. Bristol South, which contains many of the areas that most strongly backed Leave, has a higher proportion of residents with no qualifications. While Bristol West, which backed Remain, has a low level. 

Across the rest of the city, closest to the average UK voting pattern on Brexit was Southmead, which was within 0.2 per cent of the national vote. St George Troopers Hill was the most evenly divided, voting to Leave by just 0.4 per cent. 

Read more: ‘How to cope with post-Brexit blues’