A record 46,499,537 people are eligible to vote on Thursday, and many of them have been debating the whats and whys of the opposing campaigns in the comment sections of the Guardian leading up to their big moment in the polling booth.
You’ve fact-checked politicians, digested debates and possibly even changed your minds in response to your sage fellow commenters. Here, in the last hours of campaigning, we take a final look at the things that have got you talking today.
Click on the links at the end of each section to get involved, or head over to our EU referendum live blog to follow the news and discussion as it happens. Electoral law says you can’t tell us on polling day, but readers have been discussing which way their vote is going in this week’s Opinion live debate. See you on the other side.
1. EU referendum live: remain and leave make final push in last day of campaign
After a live BBC debate from Wembley Arena in which Ruth Davidson shone, for many of you, and Boris Johnson floundered over his facts, we entered the final day of campaigning with, as ever, some soundbites to digest. Would the referendum be “independence day” for the UK (that one from Johnson) or was the whole leave campaign (summed up as it was by Sadiq Khan) a “project hate”?
Below are some of the comments that provoked the most reaction on Wednesday morning.
So I've watched the TV debates with increasing despair until tonight. Whether or not it makes a difference I don't know but here's my take
Vote remain if you prefer fact based argument, expert backed projections, integrity, realism, consensus and consistency
Vote leave if you prefer jingoism, play "rule Britannia" in the bath, like old movies about Wellington, believe that britain deserves special treatment because it's britain, like foreigners but not too many of them, enjoy sticking your fingers in your ears saying "I can't hear you" and like to have the same 4 sound bites drilled into your brain so that you can repeat them without thinking.
Whether you support the arguments for leave or not, when you cut through all the nonsense, the remain side by and large marshalled experts, facts, realistic projections and also called out the leave side successfully on 2 or 3 major inconsistencies.
Leave have one solid argument, that being in the EU means free movement. It's an utterly dishonest one, because they don't plan to reduce immigration at all, but it's their one card and they play it continuously.
I can only hope the public see through this bunch of chancers.
Ruth Davidson owned Boris. She was amazing. Shame she's in the wrong party.
Ruth Davidson's stock just ticked up a few notches - If the Tories were halfway sane they'd be fast-tracking her to the Leadership.
You can click on any of the links on these comments to join the conversations.
Almost the entire world, from business leaders to financiers and on to country leaders. Experts in every field, politicians from a cross the board, the vast majority of MPs, prime ministers from both parties. Even the church of England. All of these say stay. All of these say it would be a monumentally bad idea to leave. Yet outers are wilfully ignoring all of these people, ignoring all of the evidence, ignoring the volatile markets and even ignoring the sky fairies representatives on earth.
The monumental arrogance of brexiters is insane.
Claims made during the latest TV debates naturally provided the jumping off point for most of your conversations. Many of you reacted to Johnson’s claim that Scotland couldn’t export Haggis to the US because of the EU. It’s actually because of a US Department of Agriculture regulation.
The haggis thing sums up Boris. Either he said it knowing it wasn't true, he didn't bother to check whether or not it was true or he checked the facts and didn't understand them.
He's either a liar, lazy or dim. Or more likely a combination of those things.
As well as reacting to fact checks, you talked a little about your own plans. This one’s almost as fishy as Boris’s haggis claim …
After watching most of the debates, my mind has been made up by Ruth Davidson and Nicole Sturgeon: I'm moving to Scotland. Far better quality of politician up there (and that's in spite of Salmon)
No please don't come - we are all right here with our fresh air and uncluttered spaces. We would like it to remain that way. However, if you do manage to obtain a Scottish passport, we also have lots of salmon (mostly in the rivers) - so don't take one Salmon as conditional of all the rest.
Is was Johnson who also inspired this comment.
Last night Boris Johnson abandoned any pretence about a rational case for Leave. He went into full-on, tubthumping nationalism: "it's the patriotic thing to do". You could almost see the (fake) tears in his eyes as he evoked the British Bulldog and waved the Flag and called anyone who disagreed as "talking the country down"
Countries which fall under the spell of charismatic leaders who whip up crowds into flag-waving, roaring approval about "restoring national pride" are invariably being lead down the garden path by leaders who care nothing for their country, but care a great deal about their own personal ambitions for power.
Pride come before a fall. If we Brexit, "independence day" (a meaningless phrase, we are independent, and Boris is certainly not advocating withdrawal from NATO, the United Nations, the WTO or anything else other than the EU, even though they all involve losses of precious "sovereignty") will be a cold comfort as a self-inflicted recession bites, causing job losses, repossessions, price rises and a new round of government cuts - cuts and tax rises will be inevitable, in a recession government revenues go down, and demands on it's budget go up.
A Brexit will inevitably mean the pound will sink like alead brick, and the ratings agencies have all said they'll cut the Uk by a minimum of two notches the moment a Leave victory is announced.
That matters, because the cost of servicing the existing debt will rocket, pulling money out of the Treasury - so then we'll have to borrow more, at a higher cost, the markets will begin to doubt that the UK will be able to pay it back and demand even higher rates to lend to us.
It's a vicious circle that could go on and on until borrowing costs get so high they are impossible to bear...and then you get a default.
Boris was just bluster because he has no valid arguments.
The only substantial business people backing Brexit are Bamford (bonkers), Dyson (who does his manufacturing in Malaysia) and Jim Radcliffe (based in Switzerland). The overwhelming majority of business leaders and economists know that Brexit would be an economic disaster.
The bigoty and xenophobia of their anti-immigration rhetoric is deplorable. And the willingness of their supporters to call people who oppose them "traitors" has already had tragic consequences.
Their real slogan is "vote Leave, give control to us" No thanks!
2. EU referendum: are you in or out? – live debate
As well as asking which way you were voting, this debate tried to get to the bottom of why you fell on your particular side of the fence. Maybe you were even undecided, but whichever it is, who or what was influencing you? Readers and writers came together to postulate and do the arithmetic.
Here are just some of your discussions’ starting points – you can click through to see where things went, and also have a look at some of our anonymous contributors’ thoughts above the line.
Politicians are fairly irrelevant in the referendum - they'll carry-on regardless of the outcome.
Business 'leaders' - have missed their opportunity to argue either way. They are in it for themselves every bit as much as the Politicians are. And they too shall carry-on regardless of the outcome.
[In both the above cases, others will come along to deal with the mess the current people are making.]
A good case for Remain cannot be made by people such as these as they have warped things to suit themselves for the past forty years - why change now?
The central issue is the perpetual electorate;in the UK and across Europe - and in time, if we stay on the job, pretty much everywhere worldwide in time.
Politicians come and go, businesses will exploit wherever they can.
Vote Remain - to remain with our fellow voters;to push for those who shoulder all the debt to get their fair share of the profits also.
In the end; we'll each have a voting-pencil in-hand, or be (again) at one an-others throats.
This referendum is not about facts or reality. Uniformed people will decide about your future. What a farce.
What is clear to me is that this referendum is actually a vote on current UK direction and the impact of austerity. We are being asked a European level question that hasn't been properly articulated and all that the majority of voters can use to decide how to vote is their own, local experience.
Many areas that fail to attract the investment - where the vast majority of people live, are fed-up with the status quo, under-investment and the daily drudge. Immigration has been used as a justification of all of this countries ills - and a belief that, by reducing population growth everything will be alright.
So, is this a vote to believe in the EU or as a judgement on how this country is being run?
The referendum campaign has without doubt been the most bitter and acrimonious debate that I have experienced during my lifetime. However, choosing to remain in the EU has always been the only rational option. External observers have been baffled by the Leave argument as it offers nothing of substance and gives up so much of value.
The Leave campaign has been characterised - to a shocking extent - by dogwhistle racism and barefaced lies. Who would wish to share a cause with Johnson, Gove, Farage and Britain First?
3. The polls called last year’s election wrong. Will they get the referendum right?
Finally, impatient and anxious to learn what future we will awake to on the sofa with the TV on on Friday morning, we look to the polls for answers. But after what happened in 2015, should we trust them?
Peter Kellner says in this piece that “as things stand, some pollsters seem certain to be more embarrassed than others” – which seems tricky to argue with. Some of you shared memories of past referendums, and some discussed possible reasons for methodological flaws and quirks of skewed results.
Referendums are extremely tricky to predict, nationalism can do strange things to people up to the point where the pencil hits the paper.
We had people crying in the polling station for both sides during ours, people that wanted to vote yes but couldn't quite manage the courage to vote yes, others were absolutely resolute in their determination to vote no going in, looked at the ballot and broke down.
So I reckon the pollsters haven't a clue with a couple of days to go, nobody does and if they say they do, they are fibbing to cover their backs.
One issue in the discussion about polls I don't understand is why it is generally assumed by commentators that "reluctance bias" understates the remain vote. In my experience, "reluctance" is associated with what is taken to be the more illiberal position - which is why the "reluctant Tory" is a well-recognised polling phenomenon. Translating that to the referendum, one would expect there to be a lot more "reluctant Outers" than remainers. And this then helps explain why the online polls consistently show greater support for Out. People are less likely to conceal their true voting intention on "social embarrassment" grounds when responding to an anonymous online poll than when canvassed by telephone.
Some people don’t tell pollsters the truth. On a telephone poll, people may feel pressure to say whatever is felt to have more social approval, even if it’s not what they really think. This probably means there are shy Brexiters the poll is not measuring.
On the other side, some voters may have decided that they dislike the EU intensely, but the economic risks of leaving are too great. Even though they’re going to vote Bremain tomorrow, they’ll tell pollsters they’re going to vote Brexit. They don’t want the establishment to take them for granted.
It's amusing to hear the arguments about polling. When they are in favour of their arguments then they are accepted and if they are against they are wrong. It's the same with the projections of all these international organisations like the IMF and even our own Treasury. At one time they would have been hailed by the brexiters as the epitome of truth and now that they don't fit with their arguments they claim that they have always been dubious and untrustworthy.
As many readers go to the polls we’ll be listening to what you are talking about and what you want us to report on relating to the EU referendum. You can help inform our coverage by filling in the form below.
Brexiters have spent months making a big deal (and a conspiracy theory) out of the donation by Goldman Sachs to the Remain campaign.
Yet they will remain silent over the LARGER donation to Vote Leave by a former BNP member.
Make of that what you will.