You could have guessed it really.
The most important event in British politics in decades may actually be decided…by the weather.
Heavy rain in London, the most pro-Remain part of England, may have depressed the voter turnout rate by a couple of percentage points, depriving it of thousands of key votes, election guru Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde said in the small hours of Friday.
“Given what’s been told us in the rest of the country, we would have expected a turnout rate two three percentage points higher than what has actually been reported,” Curtice told the BBC. That’s important because many London boroughs were expected to return pro-Remain votes in excess of 75%. By contrast, early indications from the English regions outside London suggest a clear majority in favor of Leave.
Suburban train and subway services were badly disrupted by repeated downpours across the capital, forcing more than one polling station to close because of flooding and disrupting the plans of many others.
Across the nation, the early indications suggest that around three-quarters of the U.K.’s 46.5. million voters have turned out to vote. That means that the two sides need around 16.8 million votes to claim victory.