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Ok, so after reading numerous news sources and forums it still appears that the people who voted to Leave feel that the 3% margin of win was democracy at work. So I'm wondering how this margin would apply to a life & death operation choice?

Would a doctor say that there is a 51% chance of success or would it mean that there is a 3% chance of success? It bugs me that people who voted Leave seem to think that this result is some sort of resounding 'foxtrot oscar' to the EU.

I will be up front and say that I voted to remain and I am disappointed with the result. Now, you only have my word on this, but I've always felt that situations like this need to be more robust. That a 2/3rds majority is required, I felt this about the Scottish referendum as well. I feel that this would be a true reflection of what the electorate wanted, especially after hearing some of the reasons why people voted to Leave.

51% means that there's a 51 in 100 chance of it working.

With votes, however, the margin is the number of votes that'd need to change for the result to change. So a 2% shift from Leave->Remain would have given a Remain result.

Personally, I think a referrendum should have at least a 10 percentage point lead (5% margin) before it could be considered a majority. I.e. 60:40.

As low as a 2% margin doesn't seem like democracy, as that figure can be easily skewed either way, by hosting it on the day Glastonbury starts, for instance, meaning a lot of younger voters will be away from the town with the polling station.

Bear in mind, that Farage said that if it was a narrow Remain vote, he'd be demanding a re-run. So a lot of the prominent Leavers are only claiming it's democracy in action because they got their own way. That said, a lot of remainers are doing the same.

We're better off keeping this in the still open Brexit thread, don't want to clutter the board with variants of the same conversation really.

No biggie though, fret not.