A Brexit poll of members of the National Franchised Dealers Association in May led to mixed results, which were not published.

Now the organisation has held a second poll, the results of which are due to be received by AM-online ahead of Thursday’s referendum.

“It was about six weeks ago. We didn’t go public with it. It was about 60% remain. Because we had number of people who didn’t know at that stage, we thought we’d do it again now and see what the feedback is,” said NFDA director Sue Robinson.

“In the main, the top 100 groups were pro remaining,” Robinson said.

“The difficulty is, with dealers it’s their business, and what gets confused is their personal view and their business view.

“That’s why the big corporate dealerships understand what it means for the business, and that’s where you get the difference.”

She said they could see that remaining in the Europe Union makes sense for their business. She declined to share her own personal view.

AM’s own research has found that only 4% of the UK’s 100 largest dealer groups believe the UK should leave the European Union. 

However, that contrasted with a simultaneous poll of AM-online users last month, which found 52% wanted a Brexit.