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My question was put on hold as opinion based, and I think it should be reopened.

The question was: What were the actual motivations that drove the Brexit?

I cite some examples of publicly supported motivations for a Brexit, which by fact checking, political pundits proved false or partially false, however the people of the UK voted for it anyway, so I assumed my information on the motivations that existed to compell people to vote for it was incomplete. I asked what other political motivations were factors in the public vote. All of this information would be public knowledge, not secret, not an opinion.

If this were a vote cast by politicians behind closed doors, perhaps you could call the motivations a secret. But what we're talking about is publicly expressed political motivations. Its possible for an answer to cite polls, recorded interviews with voters, and slogans of groups supporting or going against the Brexit. An answer could do so strictly without an opinion in the matter, just stating the publicly available facts.

Therefore the question is answerable objectively, not opinion based. The users who voted to close my question were wrong. Please vote to reopen, if there are some more sensible users reading this. Thanks.

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I can get behind a question that says something like:

John Oliver says that Brexit supporters are motivated by X and Y, but I don't believe him because he is not a Brexit supporter. What do actual Brexit Supporters say their motivations are?

That's a perfectly fine question.

However, all the talk about fact checking the pros and cons, and about doing an analysis made the question sound more like this:

People say that Brexit supporters are motivated by X and Y, but I don't believe them because X and Y are much weaker than the cons of Brexit that I know of. What are Brexit supporters really motivated by?

And That is a very opinion-based question, because it relies less on actual verifiable statements, and relies more on guessing.

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  • An answer to the second question could potentially be objective, citing polls or interviews with voters. Meaning the question is a valid one. If the question can be answered objectively, it isnt a subjective question. Maybe the answer is "There doesn't seem to be enough poll data available currently to answer this objectively as of yet." but that doesnt make the question opinion based.
    – J.Todd
    Commented Jun 29, 2016 at 20:28
  • @user6048918 - if you want an answer based on polls and interviews, your question morphs into the #1 example in this answer once you clean out the fluff. If you want anything else, it becomes subjective.
    – user4012
    Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 15:17
  • @user6048918 - Just because a question could be answered objectively does not mean the question is automatically acceptable. The question does not ask for objective opinion, instead it opens the door for wildly bad subjective answers and opining. That is something that plagues a site like this, and lowers the signal to noise ratio in a bad way, and thus why the community voted to close the question. Commented Jul 10, 2016 at 12:59
  • @Chad A question shouldn't have to ask for an objective answer on this site, it's the minimum expectation for an answer. The question is asked, and the answer is expected to be objective. Your logic is that since the question leaves room for bad answers, its a bad question. By that logic, most of the upvoted questions on this site would be off topic.
    – J.Todd
    Commented Jul 11, 2016 at 5:16
  • I dont believe I changed the meaning of my question at all, but since you guys are so interested in word play, I think the new wording and title in my question will make it satisfactory for you.
    – J.Todd
    Commented Jul 11, 2016 at 5:21
  • @user6048918 - The community disagrees. However your edit leads me to support reopening the question. Commented Jul 11, 2016 at 13:23

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