Stick or Twist?

Who are the key groups of movable voters in the UK and what do they want?

It’s just over three weeks away from the UK launch of Why Politics Fails, coming out on March 30th. You can PRE-ORDER it here. Why Politics Fails looks at how we resolve our political fights over equality and solidarity, and at the trade-offs we face over security. And today’s debates in British politics - on Rishi Sunak’s five priorities and whose votes the Conservatives and Labour can win - are ultimately about how we answer these questions. So, why is Rishi Sunak so concerned with stopping dinghies with refugees, crossing the Channel? It’s the electoral politics, stupid.

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Small Boats and Sunak’s Five Priorities

British politics this week is all about the boats. A few weeks ago, Rishi Sunak made a series of five pledges - commitments to halve inflation, bring the down the national debt, get the economy growing, cut NHS waiting lists, and stop small boats with refugees crossing the Channel. One of these things is not like the other…

There is something slightly jarring about Rishi Sunak standing in front of a podium emblazoned with ‘Stop the Boats’, as if a McKinsey executive had accidentally found themselves addressing an angry public meeting at a recreation centre in Dover. I think it’s fair to say that the other four priorities, particularly those focused on economic performance are more natural ground for Sunak.

But there are good political reasons for Sunak including the small boats pledge. I will not, in this post, discuss the moral, legal, or technical aspects of trying to prevent refugees from crossing the English Channel. Others are far more knowledgeable than I on this topic.

I also think it’s helpful to try to look at the electoral logic of what politicians do, even as we approve or disapprove of what they do. Otherwise we end up in the situation of much of my Twitter timeline, either completely uncomprehending of why Sunak of all people is hammering on about a pretty illiberal policy, or instead denouncing liberals on Twitter who don’t understand the ‘true’ desires of the British public. I’m a political scientist, so my preference is to think about why politicians do things, rather than turning straight to denouncing everyone else on Twitter. Tempting as that is.

Bluntly, Sunak is trying to shore up a group of socially conservative voters, who the Conservative Party had incorporated in a very electorally successful coalition, that attained an enormous (and yet, it seems, fatally flawed) majority in 2019. These voters are now teetering away from voting Conservative, either claiming they won’t vote at all, or, horror or horrors, thinking of voting for the Labour Party. These are the people Rishi Sunak needs to win back if he wants to stay as Prime Minister, or at least leave the Conservatives with a tolerable number of seats in opposition.

Sunak’s five priorities are mostly about the economy - about, to use the language of my forthcoming book Why Politics Fails, prosperity. But economic prosperity is not the only thing that matters to people, particularly those whose vote is uncertain. Many people care most about security - another of the big five in Why Politics Fails.

As you’ll know when you click this link and preorder my book (thanks!), we all desire feeling safe, but we end up having to trade-off the risks of anarchy with the threat of tyranny. I don’t think Britain is at the risk of falling into complete anarchy or indeed tyranny (unlike some of my fellow Oxonians whose views about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods suggest we are about to be enslaved by the World Economic Forum).

But crime, policing, and yes, migration numbers, do set off a number of voters’ fears of anarchy. They would rather chance an illiberal overreach by the government and restrictions on human rights than tolerate what they view as uncontrolled migration. Again, I am not mentioning this to morally justify people’s views, just to note they exist and are politically important. Some people view the small boats plan as necessary to curtail anarchy on the Kentish coast, others as a stride towards tyranny. Otherwise how could we end up with a headline on cover of the Daily Mail as bizarre as “Lineker Faces BBC Rebuke for Likening Small Boats Plan to Nazis”. Imagine explaining that to someone in, well, pretty much any period of history since 1990.

Yesterday, in a Twitter thread that seems to have picked up some interest, I showed some data from a YouGov survey I ran as part of my WEALTHPOL ERC project at the end of October 2022. The survey was not designed to look at this particular question so I don’t have any questions even on immigration, let alone the ‘small boats’. But I did ask people’s vote intention and I also asked a bunch of questions about more general political attitudes. Those attitudes are sometimes about social issues and sometimes about economic issues. And looking at these attitudes is I think very telling in terms of thinking about the electoral incentives of both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

Before walking you through this data, some toplines. The vote intention figures I got were I think very consistent with other polling in late October 2022 and indeed with today’s polling. I had Labour at 49.3% and the Conservatives at 25%. Ipsos MORI this week have Labour at 51% and the Conservatives at 25%. So I think what I found then is relevant for today. Below is the figure for vote choice, excluding don’t knows.

But here now is vote choice including Don’t Knows. Notice how a 25 point gap has reduced to 17 points. It looks to me like there are a rather large number of shy conservatives hiding in the Don’t Knows. Now they could be disillusioned and gone for good. Or they could come back. But what would make them?

Well, to figure out how the group sitting in NA (stats language for Don’t Know or No Answer) could move, we can take the data in the YouGov panel about how people voted in the General Election of 2019 and how they plan on voting now and look at various characteristics of those voters.

In yesterday’s Twitter thread, what I emphasised was people’s level of ‘social authoritarianism’. I don’t mean that people are ‘authoritarian’ in the sense that don’t like democracy (indeed, they often talk most about self-government) but rather in thinking that following authority and social norms is more important than individual rights at the margin. Many people, perhaps a majority, in the UK have somewhat socially authoritarian attitudes. As we’ll see, this group are crucial for Sunak to win back.

Let’s start with how social authoritarianism varies by current vote intention. The index is a twelve point scale made up out of three underlying questions. First, agreement with “For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence”. Second, agreement with “Young people today don't have enough respect for traditional British values”. And third, dis-agreement with “It is more important for children to have independence than respect for their elders.” These are five point scales (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither, Agree, Strongly Agree). I code these each from zero to four and then simply add them together. Here is a histogram on the distribution in my sample. You can see the British public average roughly a 7 out of 12 on this scale. And there are more really authoritarian people than really liberal people.

So to the politics of this. How do people who support different parties currently vary in terms of their social authoritarianism? It is, I think, what you’d expect. People who currently say they will vote for the Conservative Party or Reform UK are really rather socially authoritarian (8.5 to 9.5 on the scale). By contrast Labour voters are more liberal, scoring an average of 5.5, similar to Lib Dems, SNP voters, Plaid voters, and Greens. The other interesting group are NA - the Don’t Knows or Won’t Says. They look, it must be said, rather like Conservatives.

Now I mentioned we can do something interesting. We can look at how people voted in 2019 and how they plan on voting today and see what their levels of social authoritarianism look like. The graph below is a little complex. The numbers are the number of participants in my survey in each group (e.g. 533 Conservative 2019 voters who plan on voting Conservative). The colours reflect who you voted for in 2019 - blue is Conservative, red is Labour, orange is Lib Dems, and grey is didn’t (or couldn’t) vote. I am excluding all the regional and smaller parties from this. Sorry guys. But trust me you don’t want to see the graph will all those included. It will break your monitor.

So what do we see? People who voted Conservative in 2019 but are now thinking of voting for Labour or the Liberals, or not voting at all, look very much like people who plan on sticking with the Conservatives. As indeed do those who didn’t vote in 2019 and don’t plan on doing so now. Or the 23 people planning on switching from Labour out Lib Dems to the Conservatives (shine on you crazy diamonds!). Labour and Liberal core voters by contrast look quite sharply more liberal. And along these lines will the election of 2024 be fought.

Five Core Groups

Who matters most for the 2024 Election? Well bluntly, it’s the largest groups in the graph above. I am going to take out, however, the group with the amazing fashion-label-like nomenclature NA-DK - these are people who didn’t vote last time and probably won’t this time. And that leaves us with five groups: Con-Con (533 people); Con-DK (352 people); Con-Lab (138 people); Lab-Lab (664 people); and NA-Lab (260 people). Sorry Liberals, better luck next post. And I have some catchy names and colours for each group.

Consistent Conservatives: These are the group who are going to stick not twist. They make up the bulk of the 17.3% of the sample (including DKs) who plan on voting Conservative. They are also the most socially conservative group in the sample (excluding Reform UK voters, who’ll have you hanged for shoplifting… I jest). I will colour this group, you guessed it, blue.

Dispirited Conservatives: These are the people lurking in the DKs. Almost ten percent of my sample. They voted Conservative in 2019, to GET BREXIT DONE, for jolly-old Boris, to keep out Corbyn, or because they really like the colour blue. But they are concerned. Or disaffected. Or wavering. Whatever reasons they have for stalling, on social authoritarianism they do look rather like loyal Conservatives. Since they are weaker Conservatives, though, they get light blue as a colour.

Switchers: This group is Starmer’s Delight. They are just four percent of my sample but of course their vote counts double, so they are electorally roughly as important as the dispirited conservatives, who aren't switching to Labour. They also, it must be said, look rather socially conservative. So, as we shall see, this is going to very much shape Keir Starmer’s offer. They were blue, they’re now red, so they get purple.

Loyal Labourites: Dated Corbyn, Married Starmer. Eighteen percent of the sample. Red.

Labour Newbies: This is a super-important and under-discussed group of voters. Over seven percent of my sample. So making up around a fifth of the Labour support base in current vote intention. Many of these will be people who couldn’t vote in 2019 because they were too young (or possibly not yet citizens). Some will also be Labour supporters who couldn’t hold their noses and vote for Corbyn. Importantly, on social authoritarianism, they do look a lot like natural Labour supporters. Are they Labour yet? Til we know, they get light red (aka pink).

Who’s Who? Demographics

Now that I have given rather arbitrary names to each of these five groups I am going to look at them and them only for the rest of the post. It’s true collectively these are only sixty percent of my sample but as I say, they are the largest groups and so most electorally significant, outside of Scotland, whose politics will be very interesting indeed in the next election.

Let’s begin by looking at the demographics of these groups before we turn to their attitudes. The first thing to note is the age gradient. Consistent Conservatives are the oldest (average age 60 in my sample of UK adults). Then we have the Dispirited Conservatives at 55, the Switchers a little bit younger still, the Loyal Labourites at around 45, and Labour Newbies at under forty. Labour have an interesting challenge here, their old voters they are trying to get back are quite old; the new ones are much younger. The Conservatives meanwhile will likely double down on the grey vote.

The age pattern is even more striking when we look at the proportion of people retired in each group. ALMOST HALF of Consistent Conservatives are retired! Under ten percent of Labour Newbies are, and under twenty percent of Loyal Labourites. When people talk about there being a divide between those out of, or in, the labour force in the UK they aren’t kidding. Labour used to stand for the labour movement. It now stands for being in the labour market.

Unsurprisingly, given what we know about the British housing market, the age gradient also spills over into homeownership. Conservative voters in 2019 were two-thirds to four-fifths homeowners. But Loyal Labourites also are sixty percent homeowners. The group that look really different are the Labour Newbies where only a third own a house. Here we see, for the nth time, why breaking Britain’s NIMBY coalition is challenging.

Now you might think we’d also see a big class gradient. Silly you. We now live in John Major’s ‘classless society’. There’s barely any difference in social class using the old AB, C1, C2, DE scheme which I’ve crudely converted into numbers here. If anything, it’s Loyal Labourites who are the ‘middle class’ group.

And finally, here is one of the most striking graphs I’ve produced. This is the proportion of each group who have a university degree. Spot the difference. Loyal Labourites are two-thirds graduates. Everyone else is about forty percent grads. Including the Labour Newbies. Honestly, I think a lot of British politics can be summed up in this one figure.

Sunak’s Secret - Social Authoritarians

These splits in age and (wow) education, are the framework for understanding what kinds of policies are going to be effective at winning voters for Rishi Sunak. The voters he needs to win back look very similar in their social attitudes. And Starmer is going to have to work hard to keep there Switchers from switching back. Here is the social authoritarianism score. We saw this in the big graph above with sixteen groups but it’s probably easier to see what’s going on here.

Much of that difference comes from different views on the death penalty, a favourite of one Lee Anderson. I’m not saying the death penalty will come back - but the average score of Consistent Conservatives, Dispirited Conservatives and Switchers is 3 (Agree). Loyal Labourites have an average of just over 1 (Disagree). Labour Newbies look a little capital punishment curious to me…

And then there’s the big cultural question of our era - Brexit. I didn’t ask people what they think of Brexit now. But I do know how they voted. Here’s the proportion of each group who voted Leave. It is essentially exactly the same - over seventy percent - for everyone who voted to GET BREXIT DONE in 2019. Switchers loved Brexit (do they now? dunno). Loyal Labourites and Labour Newbies are emphatically not Leavers.

But that doesn’t mean they are Remainers. Here is the proportion who didn’t vote in the Referendum. Maybe they were too young. Or maybe they just didn’t vote. But among Labour Newbies, that’s two thirds of them. So either they are too young to be entirely dependable voters, or they are dependably non-dependable voters. If I’m Keir Starmer, that’s what keeps me up at night.

So on social issues - social authoritarian attitudes and Brexit - there is ample space for Sunak to encourage Dispirited Conservatives and to win back Switchers. I don’t want to claim that Brexit might not be done - Boris wouldn’t lie would be? - but perhaps the old dog might have one more election in him.

Starmer’s Surprise - Labour’s Populists

Social issues look a little worrying for Labour. It’s a good thing for Keir Stamer, then - if not really the rest of us - that the British economy is somewhere lost between the doldrums and a pit of never-ending doom.

I also asked a bunch of questions about more economic attitudes. Let’s begin with one that is sort of between social and economic attitudes, agreement with the statement “The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions”. Here we see a reverse gradient to before. Consistent Conservatives are indifferent (2 on a 0 to 4 scale). But as we move away from them, this statement becomes increasingly attractive. And Switchers look rather like Loyal Labourites.

This is similarly striking with a measure of economic populism that comes from adding two more questions. Agreement with “There is one law for the rich and one for the poor” a disagreement with “Ordinary working people get their fair share of the nation's wealth”. Adding them gives us a 0 to 8 scale and we see two things. British people are upset about economic fairness, and people attracted to the Labour Party are especially upset. Switchers look rather like Loyal Labourites.

What do they want to do about it? Um, tax the rich. Here we have a 0-3 scale of support for proposition that the it should be the role of government to redistribute income from rich to poor. Consistent Conservatives are about a 1 (Probably Should Not Be). Loyal Labourites between a 2 (Probably Should Be) and a 3 (Definitely Should Be). And Labour Newbies look very similar. Importantly Switchers are half way between - potentially winnable back either way, but perhaps a little closer to Labour.

People who prefer to tax wealth rather than income on a ten point scale (for more on this see my post on wealth taxation), are much more likely to be Labour-curious. Over fifty percent of Labour supporters prefer taxing wealth. Again, people who voted Conservative in 2019 but are less sure now are somewhere in the middle. Consistent Conservatives basically hate taxing wealth.

Finally, phew, we have views about building new houses locally. This is a scale going from zero to four again, so 2 is indifferent. At the margin, people who voted Conservative in 2019 oppose building new houses, and those who voted Labour, or are Labour Newbies, support building new houses. Switchers are, you guessed it, right in the middle.

The Next Eighteen Months

So that’s the territory, I think, on which the next General Election will be fought. Sunak’s base are older, less likely to be graduates, more likely to own their houses, and are really quite socially authoritarian and economically conservative. Starmer’s base is younger, holds degrees, may not own houses, and are socially liberal and economically left-wing.

But the groups that matter are those who aren’t locks. Those who voted Conservative in 2019 but are unsure or switching now are much more socially authoritarian than the Labour Party median. But they are also skeptical of Britain’s economic fairness and may be attracted to higher levels of tax and spending, if not necessarily to building houses. Those who didn’t vote last time but now claim to support Labour do indeed look a lot like Labour voters but the fact that so few voted in the 2016 referendum, even though their average age is almost forty, is a concern for Starmer.

Sunak is emphasising the small boats not because he will necessarily be successful achieving his goal there - I suspect not - but because his voters crave the feeling of security they attain from socially authoritarian policies and at least it looks like he is trying to meet those desires. Of course this turns off liberals, that’s a feature not a bug. But I doubt Starmer will be out on the Kentish coast with a Refugees Welcome sign. His concern is keeping the Switchers and stopping the Dispirited Conservatives from heading back to Sunak.

My expectation is Keir Starmer will in fact end up offering some retail politics for social authoritarians. Expect him to talk about increased police funding, mega-asbos, perhaps a deal with France about refugees. And to make his economic policies also sound like security. This will upset the Labour base, and he will need to be careful not to lose Labour Newbies who are really quite socially liberal. But the Switchers are where the margins are…

Security then will be a key part of Starmer’s message to election day. But he also has a five point plan - five ‘national missions’ in fact. And they look quite a lot like the five ‘traps’ in Why Politics Fails (you saw this coming didn’t you?). Keeping streets safe is security, break down barriers to opportunity is equality, build an NHS fit for the future is solidarity, make Britain a green superpower is prosperity, and secure the highest growth in the G7 is… also prosperity. Let’s hope he cares about democracy too. He better read my book. And that will be subject of the next post…