from Bill Still
lass=”” >Good evening, I’m still reporting on Brexit.
At 10 pm eastern, 03:00 London time, there have been several major developments that bode well for the Leave group.
First of all, in light of the better showing than predicted early on for the Leave crowd, the nation’s top pollster, John Curtice tweeted the following at 0;:21 Friday morning London time:
“At the moment at least the Leave side are favourites to win this Referendum – but there is still a very long way to go.”
90 minutes later, the University of East Anglia predicted a win for Leave. They predicted the vote for the Remain group to be 48.9%.
By 02:09 am, for the first time, the Leave group became the favourite of the betting market.
Two minutes later, at 02:11 am, a tweet from the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuennsberg said:
“Senior labour figure tells me ‘this has gone, Leave to win…”
As a result, world stock markets have turned negative, typically down 1.5%. But the British pound is down more than 4.2% – the greatest drop in 3 decades.
Beginning at 02:18 the Scottish vote began to come in. It was expected to vote strongly for Remain and has, but the turnout is unexpectedly low, so it is seen as a plus for the Leave group.
By 02:36 the betting markets have now moved the odds of a Leave win up to 55%.
[insert graph]
By 03:02, the Leave group has recaptured the lead with 50.3% of the vote.
By 03:09, London time, or 10:09 Eastern, the chief political correspondent of the Telegraph, Christopher Hope, said that at this point, even if the Remain group could pull off a win, he cannot last as Prime Minister come dawn on Friday.
By 03:10, the experts at East Anglia post another update to their previous forecast. They now say that the probability of Britain Remaining has now dropped to zero!!! They have dropped the final Remain vote share to 47.1%
I’m Still reporting from Washington. Good day.