Thread by @joe_chrisp

It is often said that the main dividing lines in British politics now are age, education and home-ownership. Labour voters are younger graduates that pay rent to landlords, while Conservative voters are older homeowners that didn’t go to university. But how true is this? /THREAD

Using @BESResearch data to create 8 sub-groups of *voters* by interacting binary indicators of their age, housing tenure and education, results seem to confirm this narrative. 63% of older owner non-graduates voted Conservative while 54% of younger renter graduates voted Labour

For all sub-groups where 2 of the 3 socio-demographic factors are “Tory-friendly”, a majority or plurality of voters backed the Conservatives. The same applies for Labour, other than older renter graduates 41% of whom voted Conservative but are a rare breed (<1% of voters)

However, looking at the 2017 election, we can see that only 4 years ago Labour got a majority or plurality of nearly every sub-group other than older homeowners. Thus, the 2019 election saw a collapse of Labour’s support among non-graduates regardless of age and housing tenure

But the fact that the Conservative still won in 2017 also highlights why examining voting in this way is a partial story, primarily due to two important reasons: the absolute size of each sub-group and non-voters

First, the inclusion of non-voting paints a different picture. Nearly 50% of Labour’s "core" constituency (younger renting graduates) did not vote in 2019 while it was even higher for young non-graduate renters (58%). This means that younger homeowning graduates most voted Labour

Comparing to 2017, we can see that some of the shifts in voting patterns can be explained by turnout rather than Labour-Tory switchers. The drop from 35% of older (non-graduate) renters voting Labour to 16% is mostly as a result of the increase in non-voting from 31% to 48%

Examining voters’ recalled 2017 vote to produce a Sankey plot confirms this is the case, over twice as many ex-Lab voters did not turnout as compared to vote Tory. NB This graph looks only at the movement of renters over the age of 55 between 2017 and 2019

To account for the absolute size of each sub-group, we can also see the share of Labour voters as a % of all voters from 1992-2019. Graduates have been gradually replacing non-graduates but still represent a minority of Labour voters

The caricature of Labour voters as young, university-educated renters is a considerable exaggeration of their size in the population and tendency to turnout – roughly 3% of (all) voters fitted this description in 2019

Meanwhile, the home-owning baby boomers who propelled Major to victory in 1992 (when they were under 55) are now the bedrock of the Tory coalition as they age. In 2017, approx. half of its voters were homeowners over the age of 55 without degrees

In short, if elections pitch younger renter graduates against older homeowning non-graduates there can only be one winner. Labour needs to find a way to win back non-graduates (at least until the current generation of students age and make up a > % of voters)

Turnout also matters. Since 1997, there have been considerable age differences in turnout. Next, @IPR_NickP and I would like to trace the geographical and socio-demographic realities of these young non-voters and what political preferences they express shorturl.at/oFJV8

A final technical note I should add that renters here is a shorthand for all those that do not own the property they live in so includes those living rent free with family or friends. More accurately ‘not homeowners’ most of whom are renters