The Labour party has won over 400 seats (out of 650) in the 2024 UK General Elections, and Keir Starmer is expected to replace Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. The Conservatives, in power for the last fourteen years, have suffered a rout, losing over two-thirds of their seats. The SNP has collapsed in Scotland, mostly to Labour, and the Liberal Democrats have gained over sixty seats.
That’s what I originally thought would be the case. But, just statistically (looking at voter share here):
2019: Cons: 43.6% Lab: 32.1% LD: 11.6% SNP: 3.9%
2024: Lab: 33.7% Cons: 23.7% Reform: 14.3% LD: 12.2% (Weirdly, wikipedia has yet to include reform in their share ranking had to use BBC)
Labour picked up less than 2% more of the vote share. Reform took the vast majority of the tory lead away.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the tories are out. But, it’s mostly because reform split the vote and Labour were second place in most constituencies. This is important to bear in mind while the conservatives sort themselves out to decide how they deal with not being right wing enough…
just because numbers didn’t change much doesn’t mean voters didn’t
i think a lot of labour voters in struggling communities went to reform which means labour got voters from elsewhere to keep up their percentage.
who know what the reform voters will do when they realise their vote was wasted in 5 years. also a lot of tactical voting will unwind.
By that statement though, the LibDems split the left vote and so if your going to compare, you’ll need to add the liberal vote to the Labour as that’s where they would go if LibDems disappeared.
Many of them, yes. But there’s also a significant share who’ll vote Lib Dem or Tory, but not Labour.
Many of them, yes. But there’s also a significant share who’ll vote Lib Dem or Tory, but not Labour.
Citation required for that.
The Liberal Party, which is now the modern LibDems, was founded as opposition to the Tories. Their values are completely different, which is why most LibDem voters were concerned about the coalition.
Labour was founded to represent workers rights, the Greens for the planets rights, and the LibDems for social rights.
The Tories are toxic for all three of those.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c888523y90mo
As per the initial comment, those that didn’t vote Tory mostly moved to Reform not to LibDem.
Because LibDem wouldn’t make sense, as a pro-trans, pro-EU, pro-increase tax to pay for public services party they don’t offer anything that Tories want.
That was a wishful thinking comment that some Tories might want to not move far-right, those that find the Tories unpalatable due to their shitty views have already moved.
I would suggest that your more likely to find folks who voted LibDem to move to Green now that they’ve rebranded themselves to something other than crusty hippies. I know my mother moved from voting LibDem to Green.
Bold of you to assume voters care about consistency or policies. For many Tory upporters in the Home Counties, southeast, southwest and east London, voting Labour would be a bridge too far. But the Lib Dems might be an acceptable alternative. There’s a reason the main left of centre party in these regions is the Lib Dems, and not Labour.
You could be right, but I am not so sure.
In terms of percentage, the lib dems made a smaller gain than labour. I’d also suggest that while maybe some of those votes came from wavering labour voters, I expect that at least a similar number would have also come from the tories. I don’t think the lib dems split the vote any more than they normally do.
Reform, while not new, last time round they did not compete against the tories. This time, they did and the result is clear.
I’m not talking about gains, LibDems already split the vote, Reform is just now doing the same to the Tories.
LibDems are not the same as the Tories. However I would concede that if the LibDems folded, the membership could easily move to Green.