Ben Lowry: This referendum might be so close that you would be mad not to vote

I assumed it would be similar to the 1998 GFA referendum – 95%+ of Catholics voting for Remain, and Protestants split 50-50.

I use the word Protestant deliberately – I would have anticipated perhaps 60% of capital ‘U’ unionists to be in favour of Brexit, but perhaps 80% of those people who are from a Protestant background but who are not capital ‘U’ unionist (ie (Alliance, Tory, Green and previous non voters) to back Remain.

Given that there are more capital ‘U’ unionists than other voting (or occasional voting) Protestants, that would work out at roughly a 50-50 split among Protestants overall. But latest polls suggest that the community-wide figure in NI is more like 60-40 in favour of Remain.

This is because Protestants are moving steadily towards Brexit (something that I have noticed anecdotally) but so are Catholics, almost a quarter of whom support quitting Europe.

When all these pro-Union politicians began flying in to warn about the threat to the Union from Brexit, I wondered if republicans might be tempted to push that scenario along. Is that the main reason for this shift among Catholics? Or are many nationalists simply fed up with the EU? I am surprised if it is the latter, given the pro EU tradition in that community.

But one thing is clear: you would be mad not to vote in this referendum. It seemed until recently that England might vote out in sufficient numbers to bring out the rest of the UK, despite the latter voting In. It now seems that England might vote Leave, but by an insufficient margin to pull the UK as a whole out.

Thus the English might start to resent the other three countries in the UK, a trend that in any event has been slowly building since the rancour of the Scottish referendum of 2014.

Either way, every vote might be crucial.

Ben Lowry: Despite what supporters of Brexit say, it might just blow the UK apart

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor