It wasn’t just young people voting that cost TMay her majority but failing to retain the levels of OAP support

Detailed breakdown from Lord’s Ashcroft’s 13k “exit” poll

How the Tories lost their “oldie” firewall

Thanks to David Cowling for producing the above table from Lord Ashcroft’s 13k sample on the survey. It provides an excellent resource which will be referred to time and time again.

The picture presented has become well-known since the election – the huge vote for Labour amongst the younger generations those in the 18-24 and 24-34 groups. What I find interesting is the the 65+ split which was not on anything like the scale that some pre-election polls has predicted. As can be seen CON “only” won 59% of the oldest age group.

It appears that key factor in determining the result was TMay’s failure to retain the level of support that she’d had amongst the oldies at the start of the campaign.

This is the CON lead over LAB amongst 65+ voters in YouGov campaign polls. The split in the final poll is quite similar to what Lord Ashcroft found.

The manifesto provisions on winter fuel allowance and social care appears to have undermined what had been regarded as the CON firewall – the oldies.

Lord Ashcroft’s poll was conducted by a mixture of online (13,384 respondents) and telephone (1,000 respondents) between 7-9 June ,2017. Some 36% of respondents had voted by post and 64% in polling stations.

Mike Smithson

Follow @MSmithsonPB



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