NEW: inspired by @p_surridge & @olhe, I looked at how the class gradient in British politics has been weakening.
Labour's loss of the working class is not just a recent Brexit-triggered phenomenon. They've slowly been losing ground to the Tories with this group for decades.
Labour's loss of the working class is not just a recent Brexit-triggered phenomenon. They've slowly been losing ground to the Tories with this group for decades.
Some notes:
1) Gonna look at other shifting gradients too, e.g education & age.
2) The measure used to define working class is share of people in routine and semi-routine jobs. This measure was revised between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, hence the changed horizontal distribution.
1) Gonna look at other shifting gradients too, e.g education & age.
2) The measure used to define working class is share of people in routine and semi-routine jobs. This measure was revised between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, hence the changed horizontal distribution.
And to those asking about the ecological fallacy, this trend — the weakening of an initially strong link between class and support for Labour vs Tories — is also very well established at the individual level
@p_surridge @olhe Quick addendum to this: the original work on analysis of correlation between working class % and Lab-Con margin that inspired mine was done not only by @p_surridge and @olhe, but also the indefatigable @GoodwinMJ and David Cutts
