And suppose we had a three-way people's vote and the result was
May's deal 30%
No deal 22%
Remain 48%
Then what?
The "no deal" option would fall out of the contest, and the second preference of those voters (where they had chosen to indicate that) would be allocated to the vote for the other options. The winner would be the option which now had the largest total. Probably Remain, in this case, since many Hard Deal Brexiters have indicated that May's option is worse than Remain.
I find it hard to conceive that a First Past the Post system would be adopted in a three way referendum. I doubt if the Electoral Commission would even permit that.


The problem is that a vote on those terms will give an unfair advantage to the remain proposition. On the first round of voting one of the other two will be knocked out.
For those who are serious about leaving the EU, "May's deal" is effectively a vote to remain.
It is interesting to note that the suggested voting figures give 48% to 'remain', which was the original voting pattern, but improves the chance of 'remain' getting the final vote. Obviously a skewed system.
Under the above suggestion, if one of the other two options fails at the first hurdle, 'Remain' can never drop below 48%, and so has an unfair advantage.
'Remain' has already been voted against by the public, so any vote should be between 'accept May's deal' and 'leave with no deal'.