Most British thinks violence likely if Brexit happens; Leavers think price worth paying

[LeftishBrit]

4. There may well have been confusion about the questions

As Denzil says, some of the responses may have been in the spirit of 'don't give in to terrorist threats' rather than 'terrorism is OK if it helps my cause'.

Also the framing of the Remain campaign as 'Project Fear', and the rather inept way that the campaign was handled in the first place, may have led to a tendency for Leave voters in particular to reject warnings of consequences as 'threats' that should be disregarded. Leave groups treating the Brexit process as akin to WW2, and Boris' high-flown propaganda about 'dying in a ditch', etc. may have had a similar effect on Remainers.

But I do think there has been a tendency in recent years for people to have an extreme hostility to MPs and think they deserve any abuse they get, especially if they disagree on some issue. People have always felt that way about 'the government' (not without cause, especially this government!); but the strong hatred for MPs seems to be of more recent origin. It may stem from the expenses scandal; or it may be just that social media has given individual MPs more or a 'presence'. Not saying that all MPs are perfect, far from in in fact!, but I fear that it is degenerating into a hostility to the very idea of parliamentary democracy. Which, whatever its faults, is better than either an all-powerful executive (i.e. dictatorship - and it's still dictatorship even if the dictator was elected) or the tribalist, media-driven mob-spirit of 'direct democracy'.