You can call someone who voted for Jeremy Corbyn a “dreamer”, but it is no use asking him or her to look under the bonnet of a car to put right a fault, or to do a complicated long-division sum. And don’t get them started about the “secretive elite” who rule the world.

A survey by the polling company YouGov has delved into which character types support each of the four candidates in Labour’s leadership election, and it provides some intriguing insights.

Someone who votes for the Blairite Liz Kendall, for example, is likely to be on a household income of over £40,000 a year, but not be a great user of social media.

Ms Kendall’s supporters are not keen to abolish the monarchy, nor are they set against sending in the RAF to bomb Isis. And as a rule they don’t tend to believe in conspiracy theories about who rules the world.

Liz Kendall supporters are likely to be earning over the national average household income (EPA)

But as YouGov’s pollsters tried to get inside the mind of the average Corbyn supporter, they found that two-thirds accept that the famous phrase “You may say I’m a dreamer”– taken from “Imagine”, John Lennon’s anti-war song – applies to them.

Meanwhile, more than a quarter of these supporters – 28 per cent – believe that “the world is controlled by a secretive elite”.

Nearly two-thirds of Corbyn’s supporters are in households with an income below £40,000 a year. When asked what their “mental strengths” are, just under half say “verbal”, but only 13 per cent claim to be good at mathematics, and a paltry 5 per cent rate themselves as having “mechanical intelligence”.

The political opinions of the typical Corbyn backer, unsurprisingly, are along the same lines as the candidate’s own. They want to see wealth distributed from rich to poor, they think the monarchy should be abolished, the railways and the big six energy companies should be renationalised, that private firms should not be involved in running any part of the NHS, and that “the greatest single menace to world peace is the USA”.

A substantial minority of Corbynites would have the Government pay all university tuition fees and are opposed to any military intervention in Syria.

Almost three-quarters of Corbyn’s supporters describe themselves as “left wing”, whereas supporters of Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall tend to prefer “left of centre”. Yvette Cooper’s support is equally divided between the two.

Labour leadership: The Contenders Show all 4 1 /4 Labour leadership: The Contenders Labour leadership: The Contenders Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn started off as the rank outsider in the race to replace Ed Miliband and admitted he was only standing to ensure the left of the party was given a voice in the contest. But the Islington North MP, who first entered Parliament in 1983, is now the firm favourite to be elected Labour leader on September 12 after a surge in left-wing supporters signing up for a vote. PA Labour leadership: The Contenders Liz Kendall Liz Kendall has been labelled the Blairite candidate throughout the contest, which partly explains why she has failed to attract the support needed in a party that has drifted even further from the centre-ground of British politics since the election. She has faced criticism over her relative lack of experience, having only served as an MP since 2010 and having no experience of ministerial or shadow cabinet roles. But that very lack of experience allowed her to initially make a pitch as the only candidate offering real change and a real break from the Blair/Brown/Miliband years, until Jeremy Corbyn entered the race and shifted the whole debate to the left. She is set to finish a disappointing fourth. PA Labour leadership: The Contenders Andy Burnham Andy Burnham started out as the front-runner in the leadership election, seen as the candidate of the left until Jeremy Corbyn entered the race. The former Cabinet minister has found himself squeezed between the growing populism of Corbyn’s radical agenda and the moderate, centre-left Yvette Cooper, not knowing which way to turn. It has attracted damaging labels such as ‘flip-flop Andy’, most notably over his response to the Government’s Welfare Bill. He remains hopeful he can win enough second preference votes to take him over the 50 per cent threshold ahead of Corbyn. PA Labour leadership: The Contenders Yvette Cooper.jpg Yvette Cooper has put her experience and achievements in government at the heart of her offer to the Labour party. She played a key part in setting up Sure Start in Tony Blair’s government and has pledged to continue her record on delivering for young families by promising a “revolution in the way families are supported” by introducing universal free childcare. She has also championed her role as a full-time working mother, taking pride in telling audiences that she does the school run for the kids before her day starts as a politician. But she has been criticised for being too wooden and lacking in passion and her attacks on Liz Kendall for “swallowing the Tory manifesto” at the start of the leadership contest have been criticised for helping Jeremy Corbyn brand all three mainstream candidates as ‘Tory-lite’. PA

The YouGov survey was conducted in the first week of August, a week ahead of the final closing date for those wanting to vote in the leadership elections. That may have skewed the findings, as in the remaining week another 200,000 applications came in, but YouGov claims it is unlikely the late entrants were any different from those who were on the roll earlier.