Preferring the key findings from the full report I thought I would copy them here:
1. People on low incomes are still more likely to vote for the Labour party than for the Conservative party: 42% of them voted for Labour, compared to 37% who voted for the Conservatives. But both parties increased their support among low income voters compared to 2015 (by about eight percentage points each), although neither party made a dramatic breakthrough at the expense of the other. By contrast, high income voters remained much more likely to vote Conservative than Labour: 53% compared to 24%.
2. While the Conservative Party’s hard vision of Brexit attracted some low income voters, Labour’s radical left-wing anti-austerity vision attracted them much more. To have the best of both worlds people on low incomes would probably favour a party that offered them both redistribution and control of immigration, but given the choice at the 2017 election their preference for redistribution outweighed their preference for immigration control. Other things being equal, support for Labour among people on low incomes with left-wing economic views was 66% compared to just 23% for the Conservatives – handing Labour a lead of over 40 percentage points. By contrast, support for Labour among people on low incomes but who are pro-Brexit was 32% compared to 54% for the Conservatives – a Conservative lead of 22 percentage points.
3. Some of the most substantial advances by the Conservative Party came in struggling non-metropolitan, pro-Brexit and Labour-held areas but the Conservative Party did not make sufficient progress in these areas to push seats from the red into the blue column. Of an estimated 140 Labour seats in England that had given majority support to Brexit the average Conservative vote increased by 8.3 percentage points, compared to an average of 4.6 points across England as a whole. Yet Labour contained this advance, even capturing more than a dozen seats from the Conservatives that are estimated to have voted for Brexit.
4. People who thought that their household’s financial situation had got worse during the year before the election were considerably more likely to back Labour than the Conservatives (48% vs. 27%). In contrast, those who thought that their financial situation had got better – of which there were relatively few (just 13% thought this) - were more likely to vote Conservative than Labour (52% vs. 29%). With inflation rising, wages stagnant and low rates of growth this is an ominous finding for the Conservative Party.
5. People’s political preferences are not only shaped by their own personal financial circumstances, but also by the surrounding conditions of the communities in which they live. The effect on the likelihood of voting Conservative of living in an area with a high or low proportion of people at risk of working age poverty was similar in scale to the effect of having a high or low income personally. These sharp differences will continue to impact upon British politics.
From the Joseph Rowntree Trust Report on The UK 2017 General Election examined: income, poverty and Brexit
by Matthew Goodwin and Oliver Heath
Overall, our findings suggest that while many voters on low incomes agreed with the vote for Brexit, and still favour reductions in immigration, at the 2017 election they were relatively more likely to vote for Labour because of their desire for improved living standards and to oppose austerity. This suggests that Labour’s pitch to low income voters and those in poverty was a key driver of its unexpectedly strong performance at the 2017 election. It also suggests, more generally, that the main parties should take more notice of the economic concerns of these voters and keep them as much on the centre stage of British politics as possible.
