Labour should be worried about losing votes to the left, not just to the hard right
Based on coverage in the mainstream media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Labour faces its biggest electoral threat from Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK. But new analysis of voting intention polls tells a different story.
According to the analysis – from Electoral Calculus – it is true that Labour are losing some voters to Reform. But that’s only part of the picture.
At the last general election, Labour won the support of 35 out of every 100 people who voted. Since then, three out of those 35 now say they’ll vote for Reform UK.
By contrast, two out of 35 say they’ll be voting Green and two out of the 35 say they’ll be voting Lib Dem. That means more former 2024 Labour voters are saying they’ll vote for one of these parties than for Reform.
More striking for Labour, though, is how many of their previous voters that are now saying they won’t vote at all. Six out of the 35 are now saying they don’t plan to vote.
Despite the fact this analysis reveals that Labour aren’t leaking votes en masse to Reform, it’s still bad news for Keir Starmer, as a large proportion of the party’s 2024 voters are no longer planning on voting Labour.
Nevertheless, it’s also pretty bad news for the Tories. A greater proportion of 2024 Tory voters are saying they’ll vote Reform now than 2024 Labour voters. Like Labour, the Tories are also losing people who voted for them in 2024 and now say they don’t plan to vote.
But crucially, despite Labour having been in government for almost a year, the Tories aren’t winning support from 2024 Labour voters.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Simon Dawson – Creative Commons
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