‘What Labour must understand about winning small “c” conservative voters’

Less than five years after Labour’s devastating defeat at the last general election, Starmer has managed to build a surprisingly broad electoral bloc.

In order to understand how this has happened, it is important to investigate the seemingly disparate coalition of voters currently backing his party and understand where these voters position themselves on key policy issues alongside their views on Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

At the beginning of May, JLP asked 2,000 adults in the UK a series of questions to place themselves, and the two main parties, on a scale of 0 to 100 on various policy issues.

We did this in order to determine how closely people are aligned (or not) with the main parties on the most salient policy issues of this election. This kind of analysis will be as important for the Labour party in government as it is during the election campaign.

Understanding voters’ values

Given the broad coalition of voters that have been drawn to the Labour party, understanding the different subgroups and their preferences will be key to success in government.

The analysis published this week shows that the public are still small ‘c’ conservative and there are pain points, where the public differ from the party, that will show themselves post-election.

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Our 2024 Political Compass analyses voters’ views on issues such as immigration, the NHS and wealth transfer. This shows that the average UK voter still holds broadly speaking conservative values.

These “Blue Value” voters are tough on crime, supportive of the Rwanda plan and think political correctness has gone too far. They would, however, like to see more money spent on the NHS.

The fact that the electorate still holds these small-c conservative values has not prevented them from deserting the Conservative party in their droves.

Shifting loyalties in the general election

These voters have lost faith in Rishi Sunak’s leadership and his party’s ability to handle issues that are important to them. The Tories are facing an electorate that generally agrees with them on key policy areas but has given up on them.

One of the most important groups for the Labour party going forwards is the people that sit in the upper-right quadrant of our compass.

This zone represents those voters that are both socially and economically conservative and make up 40% of the current Labour party’s support.

Keir Starmer needs to worry more about these voters than any other group. A post-election Conservative party resurgence could easily see these voters fall away back to the party they are more – in principle – aligned with. Given that voters tend to be conservative in their values, why are they still going to the Labour party?

To understand this, we ran a multinomial regression analysis that aimed to determine which factors are driving people to Labour and the Conservatives.

The results show that this election will hinge not on actual policies but on voters’ attitudes towards the leaders and who the public trust on the issues that matter most to them.

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Our analysis shows that the strongest current political factor driving people to Labour is their approval of Starmer. The same is true for the Conservatives.

Clearly leadership is one of the most important factors in this election and whoever portrays themselves better will command more of the electorate. This spells good news for Starmer as he tends to record more positive attributes in our surveys.

Following leadership is policy ownership. Those who think Labour owns key issues like the NHS and cost of living are more likely to vote Labour than those who do not.

These policy areas are ones that are traditionally perceived as ‘belonging’ to Labour and so whilst the public might be more conservative their priorities are well within the Labour wheelhouse.

What’s next after 2024?

This all stands Starmer in good stead for this election. Post-election could be a different story, and it might become more difficult for the party to satiate the appetite of this key conservative group without permanently alienating its more left-wing base to stay in power.

Whilst Starmer has done well to build a coalition of voters that could take him to 10 Downing Street, this analysis shows that there could be trouble ahead if he does not keep these people on side. If the NHS and cost of living remain the most salient issues with the electorate Labour ought to be safe, but if their priorities change this coalition could crumble.

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Understanding these voters will be key for the Labour party going forward if they win the election.

Around 59% of Conservative Switchers (those who backed Boris Johnson in 2019 but now say they support Keir Starmer) belong in this group of voters and it is those Switchers that are currently supporting the Labour lead.

At the moment Starmer is ahead on leadership attributes, and the salient issues are ones that Labour own, but there are fundamental policy disagreements between Labour and the electorate. It will be a tough job to reconcile these two positions, if they get into government.

Read more of our 2024 general election coverage here.

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