Given how marginal the new parliament is, Labour can’t afford not to increase its vote share at the next General Election.
Under a modest scenario where the Conservatives persuade some non-voters back to vote for them, and Reform voters are tempted back to the Conservatives, the Conservatives would end up as the largest party with 20 more seats than Labour unless Labour finds new votes from elsewhere.
It’s also possible that the Conservatives recover in other ways - for example lower rates of anti-Tory tactical voting could decrease the efficiency of Labour’s vote, and make it easier for the Conservatives to win certain seats.
Labour’s vote share needs to be a floor not a ceiling
If the Conservatives are able to recover in this way, Labour should be aiming for a 36 per cent vote share to keep 350 seats in parliament - and even this would mean a loss of 61 MPs.
This is not unachievable - the Conservative Party increased their vote share at every election since being elected between 2010 and 2019. By confronting the threat from UKIP, they increased their vote share by more than 5 points between 2015 and 2017.
While much depends on the efficiency of any new voters that Labour wins over, Labour needs to see its current vote share of 33 per cent as an absolute minimum for the next election.
Where might Labour gain new voters from?
Labour’s best chance at building an efficient 36% coalition requires attractive voters from both the Conservatives and from progressive parties.
Only 8 per cent of Conservative voters said they also considered Labour at this election, but given the Conservatives’ higher vote share, this is a relatively large number of potential votes, located in the most important areas. Labour will also have to convince some of the 40% of Liberal Democrat and Green voters who considered voting Labour too.
One major challenge: currently voters of every party other than Labour give Keir Starmer a negative approval rating.
What would a Reform rise mean for Labour?
Given the size of Labour’s current majority, a further increase in Reform’s vote share would likely be a bigger problem for the Conservatives than for Labour, but that does not mean that Labour should ignore the risk from Reform.
If Reform followed a Liberal Democrat strategy of targeting their 50 top performing seats, 34 of them are currently held by Labour and only 16 by the Conservatives - they could win all of these with a 15 point vote share increase in those seats.
Reform’s national vote share would not need to rise massively for this to be a threat - a focus on efficiency from Reform would meaningfully challenge Labour - particularly if their new votes come from Labour rather than Conservative voters.
What would a Green rise mean for Labour?
The Green Party are in second place to Labour in 35 seats, although in many of these results are distant second places.
If the Green Party repeats its already remarkable success in Bristol Central, they would still only win nine of these seats, which would only make a small dent in the size of Labour’s majority even if a larger progressive bloc in parliament does change parliamentary dynamics in more qualitative ways.
Almost a quarter of Labour voters might consider voting for the Green Party
If you're at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on Monday we'll be discussing this and more so do come along!
