Nearly half of voters who backed Labour in July’s general election were either tactical voters or did not support the party with much enthusiasm, research from a left-wing think tank has claimed.
The new report from Compass – titled Thin Ice – analyses the precarious electoral coalition that saw Labour return to office with a landslide majority this summer, albeit with a record low percentage of the popular vote.
It found that four in ten 2024 Labour voters either do not see themselves as strong supporters of the party or voted strategically to remove the Tories from office.
The report reads: “Given this, Labour would be making a big political error if it assumes all of its voters will continue to support the party regardless of its record.”
Compass’ analysis also claimed Labour’s “greatest vulnerability” was in losing votes to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats – and argued that its “safest” electoral strategy would be to consolidate the left-of-centre vote instead of courting the centre-right.
It also argues that if Labour wants to grow its voter base beyond its 2024 election coalition at the next election, any new support is more likely to come from other progressive parties. Just 4% of Reform voters would vote for Labour if they had to choose another party to vote for, it suggests, and just 7% of Conservative voters. This is compared to 28% of Liberal Democrat voters and 21% of Green voters.
The think tank cautioned that Labour votes bleeding off to other left wing blocs would be less likely to back the party at the ballot box without assurances over electoral reform, which Compass supports.
READ MORE: Labour vote fell in many Red Wall seats despite election win, analysis finds
“These parties, the members, activists and voters are less and less likely to rally to Labour without the cast iron promise of electoral reform – otherwise it’s just a case of rinse and repeat of the same coercive demand to back Labour as ‘the least worst option’. If that is the offer then more voters will stay at home or back smaller parties,” it reads.
Compass further argued it would be in Labour’s “self-interest” to back proportional representation. The report claimed that tactical voting for left-leaning parties could have prevented all eight Conservative majority governments since 1979 – and that progressive parties could have formed a majority themselves in six of these eight instances.
The think tank’s director Neal Lawson told The Guardian: “Voters now are less party-aligned and more volatile than they have ever been. If Labour fails to deliver in government, its huge but fragile majority will crumble, sending us on a bullet train to the populist right.
“But this isn’t inevitable. Labour can begin to assemble a coalition based on the UK’s progressive majority that will deliver lasting change and then allow it to win again.”
Labour won the 2024 general election with a 174-seat majority, but only secured 33.7% of the popular vote – a record low for a party that won an overall majority.
However, former Labour MP Ben Bradshaw suggested in a post on X that many Lib Dem and Green voters would also have backed them tactically or without great enthusiasm. “The public are canny and voted for the party in their area they thought best placed to beat the Tory.”
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