Voting Behhaviour

• Social Class, Labour typically got support from the working class, but the middle and upper class were more likely to vote for the Conservatives. For example, during the 2014 Independence referendum IPSOS Mori says that 65% of those living in the fifth most deprived areas voted yes.

  
  

  However due to Class deallignment, the process in which political partys move towards centre politics in hopes of catching more swing voters, the typical class allignment has faded away. This was seen in the 2019 GE, as the conservatives outperformed labour in all social classes.
• Age, Has been the biggest dividing line in voting since the 2017 and 2018 GE, For Example, Younger voters tend to be more left wing, while older people tend to be more right-wing. In 2017, 83% of over 65's voted Conservastive compared with only 39% of under 25's.

  
  

  However, younger people are less likely to vote, For example, 43% of young voters didnt cast a vote during the 2017 GE

  
  

  Switch from voting labour to conservative happens at 39
• Social Media

  Allows political parties to target potential voters through the use of data gathering that social medias such as X, Twitter, Facebook use
• Example of social media use by political parties

  • Labour posted a YouTube video named "adopt a tory" which depicted them as being power hungry, this video got 10m views
• Being the most popular Party on social media doesn't guarantee a win in elections
• Example of social media use not guaranteeing election win

  • During 2017 the Labour party were the most followed on X and still lost by a landslide from the Conservatives
• This could be due to people online not looking for political news
• A 2019 Oxford study found that only 3% of election participants spent time looking for political news
• Newspapers sales have been declining, however they continiue to shape the political debate as they are spread all over social media and MPs may be asked to comment on them
• YouGov Poll found that only 45% of the public get their political news from newspapers in 2017.
• The Sun is the best selling newspaper with an average circulation of 1.6 million copies per day
• 66% of 18-19 year olds voted for labour in 2017.
• INDYREF, 71% of 16-17 year olds voted yes compared to 27% of those 65+ voted yes.