Scratching the surface
Labour's election win was unusual in more ways than one - the party will need to plan carefully if it is to win another, writes Paula Surridge
A resounding victory setting Labour up for five years or more of power, or an unenthusiastic electorate picking the best of a bad lot? It really depends on who you ask.
Labour focused its campaign on winning the votes where it mattered politically, turning electoral geography – often assumed to be a weakness for the party – into a key strength. The party widened, rather than deepened, its appeal. This was necessary because the places where it needed to win votes are disproportionately populated by the social groups that had turned away from the party in 2019.
Labour’s support fell in groups where it had retained strength in 2019 – most notably among young women and those from Asian ethnic groups. The Conservatives, on the other hand, lost support heavily in the key groups they had won from Labour in 2019. Based on post-election polling by FocalData, the party lost more than 25 percentage points among voters aged 45 and over and those in social grades C2, D and E. Support for the Conservatives among the ‘working class’ fell to less than half the level of 2019. But Labour was not the key beneficiary; the party made some small advances in all these groups, but most of these votes instead went to Reform UK.
In terms of vote share, Labour’s performance must be viewed as a disappointment. Initial post-election estimates suggest, among those who voted at both elections, that Labour retained around three quarters of its 2019 vote. The quarter who did not vote for the party in 2024 are a mix of those on the left who had only temporarily realigned with Labour during the Corbyn era (estimated at around seven per cent of the 2019 vote), those who voted tactically for Liberal Democrat candidates (around five per cent) and those who were attracted by the anti-system rhetoric of Reform UK (around three per cent).
With turnout at an almost historic low, there is also likely to be a significant group who felt that victory was assured and so didn’t vote at all; but we do not yet have a strong estimate of the size of this group.
It is likely that those who did not vote – particularly those who had voted in previous elections – are an important part of a future strategy for Labour. It is easy to think they were just turned off by an election everyone thought was a foregone conclusion, but deeper reflection on the connections between voters and politics is needed. At a key moment, given the opportunity to remove a very unpopular government, a large part of the electorate shrugged and carried on with their day.
Perhaps the real story is this: Labour’s victory was possible because voters are increasingly volatile. They are volatile because they no longer feel attachments to political parties. In the past, voter loyalty was a powerful predictor of voter turnout. Going forward, political parties will need to discover how to persuade people to vote for them without such loyalty. Treading ‘softly’ on the lives of voters may be a solution, but showing that politics can improve people’s day to day lives could have much greater impact. Taking office gives Labour the chance to try.
Whether the resounding victory in terms of seats or the less impressive victory in terms of vote share provides the template for the next election will depend on how voters react to their new government and how the parties play the hands they have been dealt. The story of British politics over the last 20 years has often been framed in terms of its relationship with the EU, but it has also been a story of the rise, fall, collapse and rebirth of smaller parties. The 2024 election was no different. A strong showing from all the small parties in opposition and a collapse of the SNP in Scotland produced an election difficult to understand through the lens of a simple Labour-Conservative competition. Should this remain the case going into the next election, then it may be that Labour’s 34 per cent is a winning vote share yet again. But if any of the smaller parties collapse, merge or withdraw from the electoral landscape, it will be the party best poised to pick up the fragments they leave behind that will likely prosper.
Image credit: Keir Starmer via Flickr
