EU referendum: London backing Remain but needs more than 70 per cent support to balance strong Leave vote, says John Curtice

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The referendum count continues as large swaths of the country back both Remain and Leave.

While London has backed Remain with a large majority, the rest of England has generally been more supportive of Leave.

Put another way, if the UK stays in the EU, it will be largely down to London and Scotland.

But even to get to a 50/50 result London would have to return 70 per cent of the vote for Remain, according to polling expert Professor John Curtice.

Speaking tonight as the results come in, Curtice said that areas of the UK are performing "relatively" as you would expect, though Leave was stronger than expected in the north east.

However, speaking to BBC, Curtice said the worry for Remain is that there are "many more places where there are not doing as well as was would expect than places where they are doing a bit better than we would expect".

Read more: Canada plumps overwhelmingly for Remain in tight EU referendum

So far Canada has backed Remain with 75.3 per cent of the vote, whilst Lambeth supported Remain with 78.6 per cent of the vote and 75 per cent of voters in Wandsworth supported Remain. Hammersmith and Fulham lent 70 per cent of support to Remain.

Richmond, Merton, Westminster, Haringey, Ealing and Islington have also all backed Remain.

Curtice said that those results indicate that Remain could do even better in London than expected.

However, in Barking and Dagenham voters supported Leave with 62.4 per cent of the vote.

In total, so far 69 per cent of London has backed Remain, while 31 per cent voted for Leave.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland the vote has overall been overwhelmingly for Remain, as in London.

However, in Wales and the UK outside of the London, there has been stronger backing for Leave.

Curtice so far concluded: "We've had many more places where Leave are doing better than expected than where Remain is doing better than expected. Remain, yes in London, perhaps in the south west. But those better performances in London don't look sufficiently better for adverse performances elsewhere."