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Here at May2015 we are trying to gather together all the most interesting data on the election. We usually publish a few of our recent discoveries each day, but with just over 100 days to go until the election we have pieced all our ideas together.

Read on for a few thoughts and many graphs on everything from the rise of small parties and younger voters to the importance of issues, limits of polling, quirks in public opinion, and divisions across Britain.

These are broad and perennial questions. If you’d prefer to focus on who will win in May, click-through to May2015′s Poll of Polls, or predict the election, explore scenarios and track the marginal seats using our forecasting machine.

The rise of small parties

This is the small party election. For a century only three parties – and often only two – have mattered. Now six do. In 2010 fewer than 6 per cent of us voted Ukip, SNP or Green. In 2015 one in four are set to.

For the first time since the war, more people are planning to vote for other parties than either of the main two.

Ukip’s rise

Ukip’s rise really started in early 2012, when they started taking votes from the Tories (but not Labour). The economy wasn’t recovering, the “Cash for Access” scandal hit in March and the coalition hadn’t curbed immigration.

Then, ahead of the European elections in 2013, they started winning over Labour voters for the first time. In 2014 that only continued.

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But who’s actually voting for them?

If you’re white, low-paid, older, or a man you’re more likely to vote Ukip than if you’re black, well-educated, young or a woman. (Per Labour’s recently leaked strategy document: “Campaigning against Ukip“.)

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For example, Ukip support is highest among C2 voters—those are skilled manual workers, like plumbers, tube drivers or electricians (and arguably “white van man”).

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Ukip is polling best among these four particular groups: the elderly and dependent (‘L’ in the graph below); reasonably well-off retirees (E); older industrial workers (E); and people in small towns (D).

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So is Ukip a revolt on the left or right?

One of the best ways to answer this is to ask, “When Ukip do well, who suffers?” Nearly one in five people who voted Tory in 2010 are planning to vote Ukip in 2015. That’s twice as many defectors as from Labour. Only 5-10 per cent of 2010 Labour voters back Ukip.

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But if we go back to 2005, we can see Ukip are actually winning over many people who voted Blair, but Labour had already lost by 2010.

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We can track these voters even further back, to the elections of the 1990s. If we do, we can see a majority of them voted Blair in 1997 and either Kinnock or Ashdown in 1992.

Every party is a coalition. That’s true of Ukip now too. They are taking votes from Labour, especially in the north, and from the Tories, especially on the east coast.

This has begun to create two kinds of Ukip: “red” and “blue”. They are divided on two of the election’s key issues – the NHS and economy – but united by another: immigration.

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SNP

Is democracy divisive? It depends who you ask. SNP voters think the referendum brought Scotland together. Everyone else thinks the opposite.

Will Scotland secede soon?

For the first four years of the coalition, the SNP were no more popular, or Labour unpopular, than there were in 2010. Everything changed in August 2014, just before the Scottish referendum. (Graph via Number Cruncher.)

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In three months (August to October 2014), support for Labour and the SNP reversed. On referendum day, in mid-September, support for the two was even. In other words, if a referendum was held today, Scotland would probably secede.

Could that happen? Most voters think another referendum will happen by 2030, and 40 per cent expect one by 2025.

Who’s voting SNP?

Men are slightly more likely to than women, and especially skilled working class (“C2”) men, rather than managerial/professional (“AB”) women.

What does this mean for devolution across the UK?

Scots now think their parliament should be able to raise tax, control benefits and set the minimum wage, when it didn’t exist two decades ago.

But only one in six Scots thinks Scottish Labour has any power to act independently of national Labour, which could help explain their plight. How can a body that isn’t devolved deliver devolution?

These attitudes contrast with Wales, where nearly half of voters want more devolved powers, but four times as many people (12 per cent of voters) want their Assembly abolished than want full independence (3 per cent).

There is also little appetite for devolution in England. In 2012 turnout for the eleven referendums on directly elected mayors was no higher than a third and as low as a quarter, with nine cities rejecting them.

The Greens

Support for the Greens is all about the young.

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12 per cent of 18-24 year olds is a conservative figure – some recent polls have shown it above 15 per cent, and this week’s polls suggest the Greens are now polling at around 10, rather than 5, per cent. But this age distribution is the one we’ve typically seen for the party.

Compare this to Ukip, whose support is almost entirely based on older voters.

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The problem for the Greens is the old vote and the young don’t. Two-thirds of voters are older than 40; only one in eight is 18-24.

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This effectively means Ukip’s support counts for more. It’s more valuable to win over older voters than young voters: so who will parties (and governments) focus on?

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Younger voters

Less than half of those who had the vote for the first time actually voted in 2010.

More recently, in 2014, Survation found only one in five 16-24 year olds think voting is the way they can have the greatest influence on politics. That’s only slightly more than the 15 per cent who think being on social media means being influential.

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If a good portion of young voters support them now, will the Greens be the second or third most popular party in 2050? (And will Labour one day win every election?)

It’s not that simple. Views can change dramatically in the first decade after people become political. Take Americans who are now in their 70s.

They were left-wing when young teenagers, but moved right under Eisenhower. They then settled and drifted to the centre-right. (via the NY Times’ Upshot blog.)

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Compare this to baby boomers who are now 60. They started on the left under JFK and Johnson, and then drifted to the centre.

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When, therefore, are our political views most likely to be formed? This research suggested the decade from 14 to 24 are the most important years for most of us. Political events we experience aged 18 are three times as powerful as those we experience aged 40.

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What matters? The importance of issues

Politics is what we choose to discuss. In 2010 broadcasters hosted many election debates on immigration.

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In 2001 they might have focused on education. The importance of issues has spiked and dipped. (In the late 1970s/early 1980s public debate was focused on unemployment.)

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As for immigration, we’ve published data gathered by Eric Kaufmann of Birkbeck on what makes a voter likely to be anti-immigration.

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Age isn’t strongly correlated in his research, but it seems to be significant when we think about broad age groups.

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As for issues, people seem to care most about those that immediately affect them.

For instance, the young care about education (25% of 18-24s think it one of the three most important issues facing Britain, only 9% of those 60+ do), but the old care about pensions (15% do, compared to only 6% of 18-24s).

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But the old were once, of course, young (and needed education), and most of the young will one day be old (and will need pensions). But we don’t think like that.

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The environment is another issue defined by age. Only 7% of those 60+ think it important, compared to 18% of 18-24s. As I’ve pointed out, the old are the ones who vote, which may explain why climate change is a non-issue at this election.

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Foreign affairs and crime are issues which were once considered of great importance. Their significance has fallen as the crime rate has fallen and foreign interventions were wound down.

Afghanistan was the third most important issue in 2010, but stopped being referred to by pollsters in 2013.

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The importance, or “salience”, of crime spiked during the 2011 riots, when 40 per cent of those 60 or older thought it a key issue, but it quickly fell again.

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The official crime rate has been falling year-on-year for nearly a decade…

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There is more to say – there are two measures of crime, and by comparing them we can get an idea of whether the police fix crime stats, as reporters and whistleblowers claim, but we’re drifting away from the election.

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Other issues have replaced their them, like housing, which is of particular concern to the young and Londoners.

Why is housing now a big issue? The simple answer is demand far outweighs supply because we stopped homes in the 1980s – and Labour did nothing to change that. (For more on housing, you could explore CityMetric, another site from the New Statesman.)

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What would Britain look like if we listened to the polls?

20 million Britons want to bring back capital punishment. And we can be specific about who they are:

They are older…

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…likely to vote Tory or Ukip…

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…and tend to eat meat pie and like Jeremy Clarkson.

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Issues facing family rather than country

It’s well-know that immigration is now rated as the biggest election issue for voters, but that’s only if they are asked about issues facing Britain.

If you ask them about issues facing themselves or their family, immigration becomes far less important (which arguably supports the idea anti-immigration feeling is highest in areas with the least immigrants).

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In turn, pensions become far more important (especially for those 60+).

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The economy

In the past 18 months the economy has become far less important an issue…

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…but our problems haven’t been resolved. The UK is still heavily indebted and many people are still unemployed, but we seem to think there are acceptable levels of debt and joblessness.

Concern about the economy rose in line with debt in late 2008, but quickly fell again, although the debt is scarcely falling. (Per Ipsos MORI.)

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Similarly, when unemployment spikes we are concerned, but when it falls back to 5-6% concern falls far more than we might expect. People seem to agree with some economists’ belief that “full employment” means one in twenty people not having a job.

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For many Britons, it may seem like the country’s becoming richer but they feel poorer.

The Tories point to GDP and argue Britain is (finally) recovering…

…but Labour point out that real wages have fallen almost every month since the coalition was formed. That is only finally changing as the oil price helps drive down inflation (not something Osborne has any control over).

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C2DE voters – those in routine or skilled manual work – are most affected by falling wages and higher prices. And they have a very different opinion on how the coalition is handling the economy than better-off voters.

Wealthier workers (ABC1s) are now supportive of the government.

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But poorer, wage-dependent workers still think the coalition haven’t rebuilt our economy.

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This could either explain how they vote or just be a consequence of it. Wealthier workers now tend Tory, again (Labour led among ABC1s in 2012, when the coalition’s economic approach was being widely criticised).

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…but wage-dependent ones are clearly pro-Labour, if increasingly less so (and increasingly pro-Ukip).

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The debt and deficit

Big decisions on tax and spending will shape the next parliament in the way they have shaped this one.

Debt has risen since the financial crisis.

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To bring it down we need to run a budget surplus. This is what Osborne is now committing himself to doing by 2020. But we’ve been running a(n increasingly large) budget deficit since the early 2000s.

To change that, we need to either raise more money from taxes or cut spending.

But we won’t make the big spending cuts we have to make – cutting HS2, cutting the NHS, cutting pensions – or else fund spending through taxes on VAT, income or national insurance (the trio account for two-thirds of all the tax that government collects, and are all the only really way to raise revenue).

Instead the coalition has cut back on the paper clips. It has done things like cut the 50p tax rate – a very vague estimate suggests it will raise around £500 million; the deficit is more than £40 billion – and introduced the bedroom tax (which again saved hundreds of millions, not billions).

But very few people even know the difference between the deficit and debt. Which doesn’t bode well for our national debate or account balance.

In the question below, asked to test the public’s knowledge, only 14 per cent answered correctly.

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How much do things the political class talk about matter?

We never know what has moved the polls. Pollsters say asking voters doesn’t help either, they don’t really know what they think and why they make decisions. But we can surmise.

The important point, which some political journalists willfully disregard, is that very little changes public opinion. Since 2010 only three things have really happened.

The first and most important was the collapse of the Lib Dems. They effectively gifted Ed Miliband 7 per cent of the vote (about a third of the 23 per cent of us who voted Lib Dem in 2010 are set to vote Labour on 2015).

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Without that buffer, Labour would be polling in the mid-20s and Miliband would surely have long been deposed.

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This is because Labour are winning back almost none of the voters they lost from 1997-2010. Just 4-5 per cent of 2010 Tories are planning to vote Labour in 2015. Ed Miliband is not leading Tony Blair’s Labour Party.

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The second shift was the fall in Tory support in early 2012 as Ukip rose from 4-5 per cent in the polls to more than 10 per cent (discussed briefly above).

The third key development was the way Ukip started to take votes from Labour in the second half of the parliament, both ahead of the 2013 Euros and in 2014.

This could be phrased as part of a broader point – the collapse of the Labour lead as they lost votes to Ukip, the SNP and Greens. (Chart per YouGov’s Anthony Wells.)

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What doesn’t significantly change polls is a Westminster furore over debating the EU Arrest Warrant (as entertaining as it was), or the latest complacent/foolish comment by some mid-level MP.

As for conference speeches and by-elections… these had short-term effects but those quickly faded (e.g. the Tories rose in the polls after Cameron’s speech and fell after the Rochester by-election, but soon returned to the 30-33 per cent they have been polling for 3 years).

Looking back over 45 years tells a similar story.

There are particular moments when things shifted (e.g. the regular and ephemeral rise of the Liberals in the early ‘70s, ‘80s with the SDP, early ‘90s before Blair, and very quick, very temporary Clegg spike pre-2010; or the Winter of Discontent in 1979, Falklands War in 1982, fuel crisis in 2001), but the week-to-week of politics often has little effect.

Take the last six months. Some individual polls have showed sharp shifts, but we are really drifting (with Labour slightly lower), at least by historical standards.

How polls could be wrong

Pollsters failed to pick up on “shy Tories” in 1992, which shamed predictions of a Labour win (five minutes before Dimbleby went on air in 1992 the BBC changed their exit poll. When he announced their prediction was a hung parliament it was the first he knew – they had been forecasting a Labour victory.).

Exit polls at the last four elections have been extremely accurate. But polls are still often slightly wrong.

In 2010 the pollsters all overestimated the Lib Dems by a few points.

In the 2014 European elections they overestimated Ukip.

And in the Scottish referendum they slightly overestimated the Yes vote.

Some pollsters are concerned they are currently overestimating Ukip. It’s a new version of the “shy Tories” problem: there is an enthusiasm gap. For instance, in Scotland, Yes voters were far more likely to display their support.

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In the same way they were reluctant to display support, “No” voters could have been reluctant to tell pollsters (roughly half of pollsters conduct polls over the phone) they were unionists.

As for Ukip, pollsters are all over the place on the party.

Throughout 2014 pollsters were 10 points away from each other every month. Ukip could either be on 11-12 per cent, or 23-24 per cent (they are most often somewhere in the middle, around 16 per cent…).

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Ukip’s numbers are far more volatile than Labour’s or the Tories’s.

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This may be partly to do with prompting. Some pollsters—like Survation—include Ukip in their list of major parties when people are asked to choose a party in surveys. Others wait for voters to select “Other” parties and then choose Ukip.

Most pollsters don’t prompt for Ukip because if they prompted for minor parties in the past they would do “too well” (they did less well in actual elections than such prompting polls implied).

But Ukip are now classed as a major party, so pollsters are unsure how to treat them, and which method most accurately captures support for them.

Divided Britain

A quarter of us may now be voting for one of the smaller parties, but two-thirds of us still set to vote either Labour or Tory.

Don’t put them in the same room together. There is almost nothing they agree on. Most voters are partisan, and interpret everything through a set political view. (Studies in the US have shown we justify almost any negative news about a candidate we have decided to support.)

Take the economy. Labour and Tories disagree about how well the coalition is handling the economy, which isn’t remarkable, but also have completely different on our economic future. Tories are very optimistic; Labour are only slightly so, and have long been negative.

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Party affiliation even shapes how people feel about the Downing Street cat (per Sex, Lies and Ballots – reviewed on May2015).

Tories were far more likely to like the cat when told it was Thatcher’s cat than when told it was Blair’s—and Labour voters felt the opposite.

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Lighter, personal polling—friendship and religion

Is politics linked to friendship? For Labour (and Lib Dem) voters it is.

Labour voters are more likely to find it harder to stay friends with someone they know who became a Ukip or Tory supporter. (Although most don’t connect the two.) Tories have little interest in the attitudes of their friends.

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YouGov like asking voters what they think cultural figures, like Jesus or Father Christmas, would think. (They have avoided polls on Allah.)

We seem to think of these icons as fairly left-wing (Jesus would relax border controls and Father Christmas vote Green more than Tory), but our opinion of them (like our views of the Downing Street cat) may also be shaped by our views.

Take gay marriage. Opinions of Jesus’ view on the issue roughly reflect the public’s actual views, if we break attitudes down by age group.

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How we’re different across the UK – maps

So far, we’ve had few maps on May2015. That will change in the next hundred days. We’ll be applying everything we know at a national level – from public opinion to social statistics – to specific constituencies: how do jobs, religion or attitudes differ from one place to another?

We have only started to answer these questions. On launch in September we looked at how jobs compare across different areas.

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Others, in this case City AM, have looked at immigration and how areas of strong Ukip support usually have few immigrants. Such maps, of where foreign-born populations are highest and lowest, proliferated in late 2014 as Ukip dominated debate.

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Similarly, this map from the Times’ RedBox site compares attitudes to immigration, inequality and Europe across the UK.

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Left and right

Voters recently rated different parties and political figures.

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But is this spectrum increasingly meaningless?

James Morris, a pollster for the Labour Party and partner on May2015‘s Drilldown, has written about how hard the center is to identify.

Sometimes the “centre” is about what the average voter thinks, sometimes it’s about the positions between the two main parties, and sometimes it’s about beliefs and ideologies that don’t fit on a left-right axis (is being pro-European left-wing or right-wing?).

But the average voter doesn’t have identifiably left, right or centrist ideas. They want to cut benefits (“right-wing”) and renationalise the railways (“left-wing”).

The answer may be that politics is more like a circle than a line.

And the rise of Ukip has led people to suggest there is far that unites the three main parties – whose leaders are all black-haired men, who went to high-quality schools and Oxbridge, worked as political researchers, live in London, and were elected as leader aged 39 to 41 – than divides them.

They are all led by metropolitans.

And Ukip are winning over voters who are both to the right of the Tory leadership, and to the left of Labour’s. If politics exists along a left-right line, how is that possible? Those two sets of voters should be diametrically opposed.

The answer may be that politics is more like a circle than a line. The leaderships of the three main parties are all mainly progressive and pro-immigration. In contrast, Labour and the Tories’ traditional bases are traditional, ‘small c’ conservative, and resistant to immigration.

Our representatives

Who are our representatives and how well do they represent different parts of our society?

Gender

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We’ve taken a look at how the Lib Dems may be left with no female MPs after May. They could lose all their incumbent female MPs (7 out of 57 of their MPs are women), but may gain one or two new female MPs.

Parliament as a whole compares poorly with medicine and academia, if favourably with the FTSE.



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Internationally, the UK is more balanced than France or the US but far less representative than various northern European countries.



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Ethnicity

The Libs Dem have only ever had one ethnic minority MP.

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Ethnic minorities are underrepresented compared to the UK population – and other professional fields, from medicine and academia to business.

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Private school

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Oxbridge

Less than 1 per cent of graduates attend Oxbridge. Around a quarter of MPs did.

But, most starkly, the proportion of the cabinet and shadow cabinet who did so is around twice as great as the proportion of each party’s MPs who did so.

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Background

A third of Labour MPs are from a political background. Between a tenth and eight of Tory/Lib Dem MPs are. Tory MPs are far more likely to have been company directors or executives.

The only type of occupation drastically underrepresented in parliament is… manual workers. Nearly three in ten workers have manual jobs, but fewer than one in ten Labour MPs have such a background, and only a negligible fraction of Tory and Lib Dem MPs do.

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Around a third of each party have professional backgrounds. More specifically, Tories are most likely to had backgrounds in law (solicitors and barristers), military, accountancy, PR or media.

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Labour has a wide mix of professions: from lecturers and solicitors to journalists and charity workers. One in nine Lib Dems were teachers. Otherwise they’re most likely to have been in the media.

Legitimacy

Not a single sitting MP was elected by at least half of eligible voters (their electorate) in their constituency. (Tim Farron came highest with 46 per cent). Some were elected by only one in eight of the eligible voters in their seat.

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Political partisanship

Twice as many of us no longer identify with any party.

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Incumbency effect

We may be increasingly detached from parties, but some local MPs have strong relationships which could save them in May.

This belief is a key factor in the widely publicised election predictions of Peter Kellner, YouGov President. But there is no evidence this effect is helping the Tories, as his forecast this week suggested.

Instead, the incumbency effect is set to save many Lib Dems MPs and prevent the Tories winning many Lib Dem seats.

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This compares to the Tories, whose first-time MPs are not benefitting from any incumbency effect.

The betting markets

We recently used the betting exchanges to explain the implied probability of various outcomes…

They suggest we should prepare for a hung parliament:

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Either party could win the most seats…

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And it’s extremely unclear what the eventual government will be…

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The exchanges were always doubtful of a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum. When the polls narrowed the market continued to think the union would be preserved by at least 2:1.

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Possible coalitions

Who will the Lib Dems form a coalition with?

We’ve looked at how those who still support the Lib Dems (they are on around 7 per cent in the polls, down from 23 per cent in 2010), are to the centre-right.

They think the economy is by far the most important issue, and think Labour are to blame for its condition and the coalition worthy of praise for its response.

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They think the Tories are the second-best party on the economy (after themselves).

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But healthcare could unite the Lab-Lib left. It’s the second most important issue for Lib Dems, even more so than the average voter, and they think Labour best placed to tackle it.

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Best party on different issues

We can use the Drilldown to understand this. It breaks down polling data by different demographics and shows you how opinion has changed over time.

Take the economy – the Tories have re-established their traditional lead.

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But have lost their long-held lead on immigration. Ukip are excluded by YouGov. If they are included they fare best.

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But Labour lead on the NHS—the only issue on which they lead convincingly, which explains their unrelenting focus on it.

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The Drilldown can break down responses into different age groups.

For instance those over 60+ (who, you may recall, rarely think education an important issue) prefer the Tories on education but the 18-24s whom it has more recently concerned prefer Labour.

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Final thought

As journalists we’re less trusted than bankers, and scarcely more trusted than politicians. Only a fifth of people are likely to believe any of this.

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Harry Lambert edits May2015.