Social media analysis suggests Wales wants to leave the EU – although not as much as the rest of the UK. Data looking at hashtags included in Brexit-related UK posts on all major social media sites; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, forums and blogs, shows 56.3% from Wales featured “leave” hashtags compared to 43.7% with “remain” hashtags.

The statistics from Talkwalker, one of the world’s leading social data intelligence companies, reveals that, while Wales has more ‘leave’ than ‘remain’ hashtags, it still has the highest proportion of social media posts using ‘remain’ hashtags across the four parts of the UK.

How does it compare to rest of UK?

Across all UK social media, 60.7% of Brexit related conversations and hashtags advocate ‘leave’ and 39.3% advocate “remain”, said Talkwalker, which processes 500 million posts from 150 million websites every day .

But national bias is apparent. While the proportion of posts from Wales with “leave” hashtags was 56.3% this was considerably less than Northern Ireland with 72.6%, England 60.9% and Scotland on 57.3%.


The proportion of “remain” hashtags on Brexit related posts was 43.7 from Wales, 42.7% from Scotland, 39.1% from England and 27.4% from Northern Ireland.

David Cameron is urging Britain to vote to stay in the EU

In all four home nations, the economy, business and immigration were the most mentioned topics in relation to Brexit and the EU referendum across all social conversations and online.

Jobs and health care "of significant interest"

In Wales, jobs and health care were of “significant interest” the survey says, while in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, security was the third biggest issue.

Boris Johnson is urging people to vote to leave the EU in the upcoming referendum

Talkwalker chief executive Robert Glaesener said social media might be a better indication of public opinion than traditional polls.


“In the general election, national polls and social analysis lost out when shy Conservatives held the day. Today, national polls favour the Remain campaign, but grassroots voices in favour of leaving the EU outnumber those advocating leave by a margin of 60% to 40%,” he said.


Hashtags are the modern advocacy, empowering people to express a gut view. They provide real-time analysis of people’s intentions and are taken increasingly seriously by big-budget brands trying to understand and influence their consumers’ behaviours”.