Election 2017 - How The UK Voted in 7 Charts

Election 2017: how the UK voted in 7 charts https://www.ft.com/content/dac3a3b2-4ad7-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b...
Did the Leave vote prove decisive?

It is impossible to discuss the dynamics at play in this election without considering the fallout from
the EU referendum. Brexit may have become less prominent in the latter weeks of campaigning, but it
still looms large over the political landscape and will undoubtedly have played on many voters minds at
the ballot box on Thursday.
One leading theory was that Leave-voting Labour areas may have become fertile ground for the
Conservatives to make gains, so to what extent did this prove to be true?
With almost all seats reporting, the statistical association between a constituencys Labour Leave
vote an admittedly rough metric calculated by multiplying the 2015 Labour vote by the Leave vote
and that constituencys swing from Labour to the Conservatives proved to be strong.
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The impact of health

One new entrant to the conversation on the dynamics that affect political allegiances is health. An FT
analysis found that healthier people were more likely to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the French
presidential election, and The Economist demonstrated that poor health was correlated with support for
Donald Trump last November.
Preliminary results suggest that health is playing a role in the realignment in British politics, too. The
Conservatives have fared better relative to Labour in constituencies where a high share of people report
being in poor health.
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This may initially seem counter-intuitive Labour is after all the party of the National Health
Service but the key to understanding the role of health is to view it not as a specific and immediate
concern for individuals but instead as a proxy for overall wellbeing and social status.
The share of a constituencys population in poor health is strongly associated with the share of its
population in the lowest social class (as measured by the NRS DE social grade, which includes people in
semi- and low-skilled jobs or unemployment), so we may be seeing here a sign of the much-touted Tory
encroachment into the working-class demographic that has traditionally voted overwhelmingly for
Labour.
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Our analysis finds that the link between a Tory/Labour swing and health is slightly stronger than the
relationship with the DE social grade alone, so it may be that the impact of chronic poor health on
attitudes and outlook may also make people more likely to vote Conservative than Labour, all other
things being equal.
Education, education, education
Demographic analysis of voting patterns in the EU referendum or the US or French presidential
elections have highlighted the role of education in the political divide between leftwing or centrist causes
and the right.
In short: better-educated people tend to vote for leftwing or centrist causes, while those who never
went to university are more likely to vote for rightwing or populist parties.
This UK general election is fought between a more fragmented set of adversaries, which means
education was never likely to drive quite such a stark wedge between any two camps, but nevertheless its
role is clear.
The Conservatives have gained working-class votes. And yet the narrative of this election is one of a
Tory failure. So where is the exodus of Conservative voters to counteract that blue-collar boost? The
answer is: in well-educated areas.
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The higher the share of people in a constituency who have a degree, the larger the swing from the
Conservatives to Labour.
The eagle-eyed among you may now be thinking, Ah, but younger people are more likely than their
elders to attend university, so might this not just be a proxy for the role of age?.
First of all, good question. But in this case we have specifically used the share of people aged over 50
who have a degree, to get rid of as much as possible of the hidden role of age. As you can see, the pattern
holds.
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Interestingly, though, the role of education is reversed after adjusting for a set of other key
demographic and social factors. Once Labour Leavers, health and the percentage of people without a
passport are accounted for, higher levels of education are actually associated with a higher swing to the
Conservatives.
This suggests that university attendance is tied up with social class and attitudes a theory the FT
has explored previously and that it is those other characteristics that are driving shifts between
Labour and the Conservatives.
With those overlapping factors dealt with, having a degree is as much a signifier of coming from a
wealthy background as anything else, which explains why it would be positively associated with a
pro-Conservative swing.
Who benefited from the Ukip collapse
One narrative that emerged as the campaign wore on was the mass migration of 2015 Ukip voters to
the Conservatives. A tipping point came in early May when more 2015 Ukip supporters said they
intended to vote for Theresa Mays party than Paul Nuttalls.
In the final days of the campaign, Labour appeared to be getting a Ukip boost of their own, suggesting
the benefits might be spread equally between both parties, but the results suggest the Tories were the
clear winners in this regard.
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On a seat-by-seat basis, Ukip losses were extremely closely associated with Conservative gains, and
the relationship grows even stronger after adjusting for the EU referendum result.
The implication is that Ukip was, as some had suggested, a gateway drug for people who had voted
for leftwing and centrist parties before 2015, turned to Ukip in 2015, and have now ended up with the
Conservatives.
Election day polling from Lord Ashcroft also supports this conclusion: 57 per cent of 2015 Ukip voters
went Conservative on Thursday, compared with 18 per cent who voted Labour.
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Ukip had previously taken 28 per cent of its 2015 supporters from the Conservatives and 10 per cent
from Labour, so if the 2017 trajectories prove correct, this would demonstrate a considerable net gain for
the Tories via the Ukip route over the seven years since the 2010 election.
The same data demonstrate Labours secret to success this time around: the party picked up votes
from all other parties in similar numbers, and fared similarly among different demographics.
This lack of a pattern to their gains along clear political or demographic dividing lines may be the
clearest sign yet of a Corbyn factor, whereby people of all stripes simply became more likely to vote
Labour as the campaign wore on, won over by a campaign and leader that seemed to be gaining
momentum while their opponents stumbled.
The polarising forces in British politics are changing
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Not so long ago, class was the starkest dividing line in British politics and society at large. In the
October 1974 general election, 56 per cent of middle-class voters backed the Conservatives, compared
with just 19 per cent who voted Labour. A few rungs below them on the social ladder, the lower working
classes voted in almost the polar opposite manner: 57 per cent backed Labour, 22 per cent went
Conservative.
Across the electorate as a whole, Labour won 40 per cent of the vote to the Tories 37 per cent.
Another way of saying this is that the middle classes were 40 percentage points more pro-Conservative
than the electorate as a whole, and the lower working classes were 32 points more pro-Labour: a total
partisan gulf between the classes of 72 points.
But fast-forward 43 years to today, and the gap has plummeted to just 15 per cent. According to Lord
Ashcrofts poll, the Conservatives beat Labour by three points among middle class voters in 2017 bang
in line with the overall figure while lower working-class voters were 15 points more pro-Labour than
the overall average.
This represents a remarkable redrawing or perhaps erasing of the dividing lines of class. With the
Labour party increasingly appealing to educated, cosmopolitan city dwellers, and the middle class itself
simultaneously becoming ever more urbanised, voting Conservative is simply not the natural move it
once was for this demographic.
At the other end of the spectrum, working-class voters increasingly make their political moves based
on socially conservative rather than economically liberal views, resulting in a weakening of their once
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unquestioned ties to Labour, and a gradual acceptability perhaps via a couple of years with Ukip of
voting Conservative.
But if class no longer divides Britons at the ballot box, another characteristic has stepped into its
place: age.
Younger voters have always tended to lean Labour, and older voters Conservative, but for more than
20 years from 1987 to 2010, these partisan leanings remained small and stable.
But in the last seven years a yawning gap has opened up. In 2010, 18-to-24s broke just one point in
favour of Labour, while over-65s favoured the Tories by 13 points. But in 2017 young voters broke in a
landslide to Labour, backing Jeremy Corbyns party over the Tories by 51 points more than the national
average.
And polarisation is not just for the young: over-65s favoured Theresa Mays party by 35 points 32
more than the average for the electorate. In just seven years the partisan age gap has shot up from 14
points to 83.
Early figures this year suggest that young people turned out in force on Thursday. If they feel their
efforts were rewarded, a simultaneous ramping up of youth engagement and age-based polarisation
could create a heated political debate for years to come.
Politics is political
Slicing and dicing the results by demographics and social characteristics can give us a good idea of the
dynamics at play in an election, but the existing political landscape in each seat plays an important role,
10 of 16 10/06/2017 01:02
too, given the tactical nature of voting in Britain.

Using only the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of each seat, a model combining
various variables predicts around 65 per cent of the swing between Labour and the Conservatives in any
given constituency.
Adding in the existing political context in the form a data on the previous winner and runner-up of a
seat, and adjusting for the different nature of politics in different regions, raises the explanatory power
of the model to 75 per cent.
Did the parties spread their votes efficiently?
Some of the excitement around a possible Corbyn surge as Labour ate into the Tory poll lead was
tempered by concerns that Labour may indeed gain votes, but only in seats where it was already
comfortably in front.
The early evidence is that these worries were misplaced: many of Labours biggest swings against the
Tories came in marginal seats, with minimal padding of healthy leads.
The party either overturned or significantly reduced the Conservative margin even in places like
Canterbury, which has voted Conservative since 1918.
Labour has also widened its lead in areas where its 2015 margin was precarious, such as Ealing
Central and Acton. The chart below shows how Labour has performed against the Conservatives in seats
where they and the Conservatives were the top two parties in 2015.
There had been fears that Labour would gain votes in safe seats. Darker red dots and lines show
greater changes in the Conservative-Labour margin. Many of the reddest constituencies had margins of
around 10 percentage points in 2015.
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How did the modellers fare?

Ahead of the election various pollsters, academics and analysts modelled the likely distribution of
seats based on polling and the demographics of each constituency. Most projected large Conservative
majorities, but pollsters YouGov were an outlier in predicting a hung parliament.
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Heres how all the models compare to the exit poll:
Technically, the exit poll is itself a projection, so how much can we trust its top line numbers at this
stage?
As the FTs elections analyst Matt Singh writes: At no point in the past quarter of a century has the
largest partys seat total been wrong by more than 15 seats.
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We will be updating this story with more analysis of the key statistics and patterns from the election
as they emerge.
Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others. The
Financial Times Ltd.
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Election 2017: how the UK voted in 7 charts https://www.ft.com/content/dac3a3b2-4ad7-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b...

Did the Leave vote prove decisive?

The impact of health

too, given the tactical nature of voting in Britain.

How did the modellers fare?

Heres how all the models compare to the exit poll:

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