Initial takes on the 2019 election have focussed on the need for Labour to win back the trust of socially conservative voters, while this is undoubtedly true there is a little more to the story as 2010 Labour voters considering voting for the Conservatives were also more moderate on economics than 2010 Labour voters that were likely to stay with the party.

It will be sometime before we have data for the political values and voting behaviour of indivdual voters on December 12th. But as the Labour leadership campaign is well under way and the earliest accounts of the election pass very quickly into accepted knowledge it is important to have information as soon as possible to help understand what happened and why. To this end this blog uses data from wave 16 of the British Election Study Panel, data which were collected just after the European Parliament Elections in June 2019. Of course, much changed in British politics in the months between these data being collected and the election being held (two new party leaders, a change or clarification of Brexit policy by parties, missed deadlines, proroguing parliament and of course the election campaign itself). Nonetheless these data can tell us something about the value positions of different groups of voters and their intentions.

Rather than using vote intention in June 2019 (when both the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party were riding waves of support carried over from the European Parliament elections), this piece uses a measure which asks people to say ‘How likely is it you would ever vote for each of the following parties’, with 0 being very unlikely and 10 being very likely. For identifying groups of ‘likely’ voters anyone who gave a score of 6 or higher for that party is considered a ‘likely’ voters.

We can use these measures to see how party support has evolved since 2010. And which groups of voters the parties were most likely to be ‘shopping in’ in 2019.

Splitting groups of 2010 voters by their subsequent vote in the 2016 referendum reveals interesting differences in the party’s fortunes (note these do not sum to 100% because voters can assess their likelihood of voting for more than one party as 6+)

Table 1: Leave voters

Among those who voted Labour in 2010 and went on to vote leave in the EU referendum (this is around 42% of the 2010 Labour voters in the sample); more are likely to vote for the Brexit party than for Labour. Less than half of the voters the Labour party won in 2010, who went on to vote leave, say they are likely to ever vote for the party. This illustrates the scale of the task for any Labour leader who seeks to rebuild this coalition of voters.

Conservative 2010 voters who voted leave are almost equally likely to say they are likely to vote for the Brexit Party or the Conservatives. Unsurprisingly, given the clear position on leaving the EU that the party has espoused the Conservative party have been far more able to retain their 2010 leave voters as potential voters in the future (though with the threat of the Brexit party and any potential successor still lurking albeit dormant for the time being).

Table 2: Remain voters

The equivalent figures for those who voted remain in 2016 show that these patterns are not simply symmetric. While Labour were ‘retaining’ less than half their 2010 voters who voted leave, the Conservatives were retaining almost as many of their 2010 remain voters as their 2010 leave voters. While both Labour and the Conservatives face a similar challenge for their remain voters from the Liberal Democrats there are slightly more of these for Labour to lose (58% Labour 2010 compared with 31% Conservative in this sample of 2010 voters voted remain).

In a world where it is possible that votes in the EU referendum fade as predictors of party support it may be more important for parties to understand the broader value positions of these groups. The value positions of voters are measured using two dimensions which are discussed in more detail in here but which broadly capture economic left-right positions and social liberal-conservative positions.

For the purposes of presentation I have restricted the ‘economic left-right’ axis to values between 0 and 6 (an indication that all voter groups identified here lie on average to the ‘left’ of this scale), and the ‘social liberal-conservative’ axis to values between 4 and 10 (to provide symmetry on the scales and reflecting that all the groups identified lie in the more socially conservative part of this scale).

Figure 1: 2010 voters in Value space

Using this map of values, we can highlight challenges the two main parties face and how the shape of British politics may continue to evolve.

The challenge to Labour

The 2010 Labour voting groups (represented in the chart by circles) are quite widely spread across the value space. We can identify three groups which posed a particular threat to the Labour vote in 2019 (though we do not yet know exactly which saw the largest losses).

Labour voters considering the Liberal Democrats

Labour 2010 voters who were potential Liberal Democrat voters in 2019 are more liberal than the group who remained potential Labour voters. They are one of the most socially liberal groups for 2010 voters in the electorate. However, in terms of economic values they are broadly similar to other groups of 2010 Labour voters.

Labour voters considering the Brexit party

As has been shown by earlier analyses, there is virtually no difference between previous Labour voters considering the Brexit party, the Liberal Democrats or indeed staying with Labour in terms of their economic values. Those who previously voted Labour who considered themselves likely to ever vote for the Brexit party are not more ‘right wing’ on economic issues.

However, they are very distinct and different from other groups of Labour 2010 voters on social issues. This group are the most socially conservative group of voters on the chart (equal with 2010 Conservative voters who were considering the Brexit party).

It is this difference that has been (rightly) focussed on in recent weeks. But this is not the whole story as there are a 3rd group of Labour 2010 voters to consider.

Labour voters considering the Conservatives

This group differ from the other groups in that they are further to the ‘right’ on economics, in fact laying almost equidistant between Labour 2010 and Conservative 2010 voters who are still potential voters for those parties.

This is an important point for the Labour party to consider. While the immediate diagnosis of the election has been to blame either Brexit or Corbyn (or possibly both) these early arguments have not suggested that the party was in fact losing voters because the voters were more moderate on economics than the party.

(An important caveat to add here is the Labour support among the youngest voters; those under 30 are not part of this analysis as they were not old enough to vote in 2010. Nonetheless it is older voters that Labour needs to most urgently win back).

The new Conservative Coalition

It isn’t possible at this point to say exactly how the Conservative coalition of voters in 2019 was comprised. But it is likely to have drawn from the groups here that were considering the party in June 2019.

The groups that were considering the Conservatives (be they 2010 Labour, Liberal Democrat or Conservative voters) are all closely clustered on the social liberal-conservative dimension (each represented by a dark blue shape in the chart). However, they are more widely spread across the economic dimension with the Labour 2010 voters considering the Conservatives (as already pointed out above) being substantially to the left of the 2010 Conservative voters still considering the Conservatives.

This poses a new challenge for the Conservatives, and the extent to which they move to meet those ‘new’ voters will have important ramifications for Labour in terms of how likely they are to bring those voters back into their electoral coalition in 2024.

As with the Labour vote the Conservative 2010 voters who were considering the Brexit party or the Liberal Democrats are quite far apart on the social liberalism dimension. However, while 2010 Conservatives considering the Brexit party are in a similar position to 2010 Labour voters considering the Brexit party on this scale, those 2010 Conservatives considering the Liberal Democrats are not as liberal as other voters considering the Liberal Democrats and are much closer to the groups considering the Conservatives in terms of their economic positions. This reflects the challenges the Liberal Democrats had in 2019 of trying to win over new voters from the Conservatives, as they were neither as ‘liberal’ nor as ‘left-wing’ as other potential Liberal Democrat voters.

These data are only indicative of the 2019 election and we must wait for survey data on individuals to solidify this picture with the actual behaviours of voters. Two key points emerge, one which has been well documented and is already shaping Labour’s internal debate post-election; this is the gulf between different parts of the Labour coalition in terms of the social liberal-conservative value dimension and the challenge in reconnecting with the social conservative voters without losing the socially liberal. The second has been less well documented and has featured much less in the post mortems of the election. Those voters who voted Labour in 2010 but who were considering the Conservatives were more socially conservative than those that were not but they were also less ‘left-wing’ being placed lamost halfway between Labour and Conservative voters who were likely to stick with their 2010 choice. While the 2010 Conservative voters considering Labour mirrored this (were more socially liberal and more left-wing) there were far fewer of these in the electorate for Labour to compensate with.

Much more will be revealed with new data releases to come over the next weeks and months. It is clear that electoral volatility has been high for some time, which may offer some comfort to Labour that voters lost in December can be won back. The right diagnosis of which voters were lost, and why, is critical to this. Moving beyond both Brexit and Corbyn’s leadership to understand the electorate and their values should be an essential first step in this process.