Voting behaviour and the Media

• social class

  The classification of people based on their occupations and their income. Social class is often expressed using social grades AB,C1,C2 and DE which divide the population up into different professions
• AB class

  higher and intermediate managerial, administrative and professional occupations
• C1 class

  Supervisory and clerical and junior managerial and administrative occupations
• c2

  Skilled manual occupations
• DE

  semi skilled and unskilled occupations, unemployed and lowest grade jobs
• Peter Pulzer

  "Class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail"
• 1964 AB % voting conservative

  78
• 1964 DE% voting Labour

  64%
• 1997 AB% voting Conservative

  41
• 1997 DE% voting labour

  59%
• 2017 AB% voting conservative

  43%
• 2017 DE% voting Labour

  47%
• 2019 AB% voting conservative

  45%
• 2019 DE% voting labour

  39%
• Yes, social class is important

  . Class divides in voting expressed more subtly, such as probability that BAME voters in low paid jobs may vote labour

  .Education new reflection of class as 58% of those with GCSEs or below voting conservative and 43% of those with a degree of higher voting labour in 2019 GE

  . Tories targetted 'left-behind' towns in 2017 and 2019
• No, social class isn't important

  . Undercut by partisan/class dealignment and issue based voting e.g brexit

  . 2017 GE saw the DE vote split

  . 2019 conservatives won support from AB and DE

  . Class therefore no longer important
• 2017 GE vote split

  43% = conservative

  47%= Labour
• 18-24 vote % for conservatives in 2017

  27%
• 18-24 vote % for labour in 2017

  62%
• 18-24 vote % for conservatives in 2019

  21%
• 18-24 vote % for labour in 2019

  56%
• 70+ vote % for conservatives in 2017

  69
• 70+ vote % for Labour in 2017

  19
• 70+ vote % for conservatives in 2019

  67
• 70+ vote % for labour in 2019

  14
• 18-24 vote % split in 1983

  42% = conservative

  33% = labour
• 2017 labour support

  majority of support from all age groups between 18-39
• YouGov voting points for labour 2019

  . Every 10 years older the likelihood they'd vote labour decreased by 8 points
• 65+% vote for Conservatives in 2019

  61%
• 2019 highest region voting conservative

  East Midlands

  55%
• 2019 highest region voting Labour

  london

  48%
• 2019 lowest region voting conservative

  london

  32%
• 2019 highest lowest voting labour

  southeast

  22%
• 2019 highest region voting Lib dem

  southeast

  18.2%
• 2019 lowest region voting libdem

  northeast

  7%
• 2019 highest region voting SNP

  45%
• Regional Voting Patterns

  Strong correlations between brexit vote and 2019 GE vote

  signals issue votes
• strong leave constituencies % vote change from 2017

  conservatives= +6.1%

  Labour= -10.4%

  Libdem= +2.6%
• strong remain constituencies % vote change from 2017

  con= -2.9%

  lab=-6.4%

  lib= +4.7%
• Gender on voting

  Gender gap means women are a few percentage points more liberal because of issues like abortion and pregnancy