  The Brexit referendum on the United Kingdom membership of the European Union
took place on 23 June 2016. On the basis of a 52-48 split, statements such as:
the majority of the UK chose to leave the EU, or the British people have voted
to leave the European Union, or the will of the British people is to leave the
EU, have pervaded political discourse and newspaper articles. In a recent
paper, the authors present scientific arguments to contend that all those
statements are without basis. They point out the fundamental issues with the
Brexit referendum, which lie in how the data was summarized, ignoring
fundamental statistical principles, and in the lack of terms of reference
fixing a threshold for the result and for the minimum turnout. If carefully
planned, the actual division of the United Kingdom would have been properly
captured and the result---either way, for Leave or Remain---would have been
readily accepted. In the present paper, the authors summarize the discussion
and add some context in non-technical terms.
