Should the UK expand North Sea oil drilling or prioritise renewables?

Expand drilling won the referendum, 54% to 46%, an eight-point margin that flatters the "yes" side more than the underlying vote suggests. Strip out the one age bracket with real numbers behind it and the picture inverts: this was a result carried by scattered small groups rather than a settled consensus.

The 25-34s, the biggest cohort by far at 13 votes, broke decisively for renewables, 9 to 4, the only split in the data with enough weight to generalise from. Every other age group ran the other way, but each on a handful of votes — three under-24s, three in their late 30s, a lone over-65 — too thin to call a trend, more a reminder that this vote drew a narrow slice of the country rather than a cross-section of it.

Gender told a similar story of small-sample noise: men split close to even, 7-8, while five women broke 4-1 for renewables. Neither reaches the size where a newspaper column should lean on it, but both point the same direction as the age data, toward younger and female voters favouring the net-zero path and leaving fossil-fuel expansion looking like a minority taste dressed up by a majority vote.

It is the sort of split that would unsettle Andy Burnham more than reassure him: the "yes" side won the vote, but not the constituency that actually turned out in force.