With government departments, international organisations, and respected thinktanks lining up to write reports about what a terrible idea Brexit would be, and polls consistently showing Remain ahead, many Bremainers might be tempted to relax about the outcome of the European Union referendum.

While occupants of the Westminster bubble (your author included) might be sad enough to take on such marathon reads, they mean little to your average voter.

And why should they?

The electorate quite reasonably tends to spend their time with friends and family rather than leafing through the pages of the latest economic report of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Life is simply too short.

This reflects a much wider problem with the Remain campaign so far. Most voters just do not think about political facts in the dispassionate and analytical way the movement seems to think they do.

Voters tend to vote on the basis of their feelings of familiarity with a candidate, campaign or principle, rather than comparing manifestos line by line.

This is not to call voters ill-informed or unintelligent. The simple fact is that for most people politics is not the heart of their world.

For voters, knowing who is appearing in front of the next Treasury select committee is of little or no interest, luckily for Vote Leave’s Dominic Cummings after his latest outing.

The current mayoral campaign is a textbook example of how emotional campaigning can go disastrously wrong.

Zac Goldsmith’s attempts to smear Sadiq Khan by linking him with Islamic extremism have completely backfired.

Instead of the feelings of fear and uncertainty the tactic was supposed to elicit among voters toward Khan, Goldsmith instead instilled a palpable sense of disgust among voters towards himself.

Voters, naturally, have felt closer to the man selling himself as a candidate as honestly as possible than the one trying to bring his opponent down with racist slander and innuendo, while being unable to put a convincing case for his own merits for the job.

For all the attempts of Tory spin doctors to campaign negatively, for negative campaigns to work, they need some basis in fact.

Whatever the attraction of Zac’s policies, it is no surprise Khan is now the bookie’s favourite.

For the Remain camp, the lessons are clear. Emotional arguments are important, and emotional miscalculation is deadly.

The economic evidence that is the core of the Remain camp’s argument will be utterly meaningless unless these arguments can be presented to voters in a way they can engage with.

Just citing the Treasury estimated £4,300 cost per head figure of Brexit is a complete waste of time, for example. Voters will happily risk this phantom growth if they think they will be made more secure by voting to leave.

Instead, the campaign needs to make clear what people will really lose.

They might well keep their jobs and the economy will not implode if we leave. But their chances of promotions or higher wages will be badly damaged by the economic costs of an exit.

And that they can likely kiss goodbye to that future raise, that bonus, that company car or that transfer that could help their careers.

If the campaign can convincingly put these messages to voters, it is a price few will be willing to sacrifice for an ethereal notion of sovereignty.

The positive emotional case for union should also not be discounted.

Highlighting Britain’s leading role in Europe, spreading hard won values across the continent, must be at the heart of this emotional bid. The campaign must make clear that European values are British values, rather than succumbing to counter the wolf whistling nationalism of the Brexiters. National pride cuts both ways.

However, such an emotional approach to the campaign also means that some voters will need to simply be ignored.

As Peter Hitchens put it at a recent debate when asked about whether he thought the economy would be larger or smaller after a Brexit, he replied that it just did not matter. The EU debate is not about the size of the economy, it is about national identity.

For many older people, this view rings true. My grandmother explained to me that her choice to vote out was because she just ‘doesn’t feel comfortable being in a union with Germany at its centre.’

We have to face the fact that the lived experience of many older people is one where German bombers once flew overhead.

This is not to say they are xenophobic, far from it. But they feel that any form of EU is a ‘risk’ not worth taking, whatever the economic benefits.

My generation, on the other hand, is far more used to drinking merrily with Germans in university bars than bayonetting them in a corner of some foreign field.

Unsurprisingly, younger generations take a very different and somewhat less risk adverse approach to union, and do not hold the same sorts of unconscious fears of other Europeans.

Of course times have changed inexorably. But feelings are incredibly durable and older generations are not going to change their minds now. Campaigning strategies must reflect this.

Having the a body such as the Office for National Statistics call Vote Leave’s statistics misleading might be all rather enjoyable in the offices of the Remain campaign, but a big chunk of the British electorate don’t know what the ONS is or what it does.

Recognising that voting in this referendum will be an emotional, rather than a statistical choice, is the real key to winning it.

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George Greenwood is a political columnist at CapX. He tweets @GeorgeGreenwood

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