Change Pending - the path to the 2024 General Election and beyond

Based on polling and focus group research of more than 10,000 people in the week after the election and more than 60 focus groups during and after the election campaign, this report sets out the story of the 2024 election and what it means for what comes next. It does so through using the lens of More in Common’s British Seven segments – a segmentation that groups the British public according to their values and worldviews.   

A change election

The 2024 election was undoubtedly a "change election", with over seven in ten voters saying Britain needed change rather than to stick with the plan. This vote continues a pattern started in the 2016 Brexit referendum and continued in the 2019 general election of voters demanding change with how British politics and society works. That desire for change is illustrated most starkly by the fact that on average incumbent MPs lost votes from 2019 regardless of party – including in a majority of Labour-held seats.

While around seven in ten voters believe the new Government has a mandate to change the country, the public are evenly split (54 per cent to 46 per cent) on whether the Labour government will succeed in improving the lives of people like them.

That Labour's victory came despite winning just over a third of the vote reinforces the fact that many voters wanted to remove the Conservatives from power but remained unsure about the alternative.  Labour now faces the challenge of both understanding and delivering the change the country wants, to hold together and deepen their broad but likely fragile coalition.

The public’s key test for the success or failure of Labour’s delivery will be NHS waiting lists - more than half the public see mismanagement of the NHS as the Conservative’s biggest mistake since 2019, and policies on the NHS was also the top reason given by 2024 Labour voters for supporting the Party. 

In fact, 63 per cent of the public say that the NHS will be the benchmark against which measure Labour’s success or failure - higher than any other delivery test. However, improving the NHS also sits alongside the public’s expectation that the new Government finds solutions to the cost of living crisis which ensures people aren’t simply “living to work and working to live”, developing an immigration strategy that balances compassion and control, and making a reality of the promise of GB Energy to tackle climate change and lower bills - a proposal supported by over 70 percent of voters of all political stripes. 

Delivery of tangible improvements to people's lives is crucial to meeting voters’ demands for change, but it must be done in a way that demonstrates respect for ordinary people and their concerns. Voters' expectations for change go beyond delivery. An overwhelming 96 per cent of voters say that respect for ordinary people is an important quality for a politician - the highest of any attribute tested, something relayed in focus group conversation after focus group conversation.  

Labour's coalition

Labour's support now spans a much broader and less ideologically cohesive coalition than in 2019. Labour won its 174 seat majority on just a third of the popular vote - by shifting from a coalition of ideology to one of pragmatism. Voters were more likely to say they backed the party at this election they saw as the most competent, rather than whose policy’s they preferred.

In 2019, Labour’s support ranged between 67 per cent with the most progressive segment of the population to just 9 per cent with the most conservative. Today that gap of 56 points has narrowed to just 27, with nearly a quarter of Backbone Conservatives supporting Labour. As a result, only about a third of Labour voters are from the more left leaning "Progressive Activist" or "Civic Pragmatist" segments, down from over half in 2019. 

Labour’s support fell around 17 points from 2019 among Progressive Activists - the most left leaning segment of the population but rose 15 points with the more Cameronite “Established Liberal” segment of the population powering their gains in the Blue Wall in the south of England. Labour’s vote share was also 11 points higher than in 2019 among the more socially Conservative “Loyal National” vote group, helping them to reverse Boris Johnson’s gains in the Red Wall and win back seats in the north and midlands of England.

Labour’s coalition is also one of the ‘head’ rather than the ‘heart’. Nearly a quarter of those who voted Labour (23 per cent) voted for Labour for the first time. Many votes were strategic - just under three in ten (28 per cent) of 2024 Labour voters give the top reason for their vote as stopping another party from winning.  Labour’s support is a coalition of valence not a coalition of ideology.  Keir Starmer now faces the challenge of balancing the differing expectations and priorities of these different constituent groups. 

Asked if they had voted with their heart rather than their head and eschewing any tactical considerations the electorate's support for Labour would drop by four points with the Greens up three points. Such a result would have made it far harder for Labour to command a significant majority.

Now that the Conservatives have been ejected for office the desire to remove an unpopular Government will not be enough to keep Labour’s pragmatic coalition together. With a majority that is broad but precarious, fragmentation of the electorate means Labour will need to shore up voters both on its right flank who may be tempted back to the Conservatives and those on the left who are increasingly willing to vote Green or for independent candidates. 

Conservative decline

The Conservative vote share collapsed to historic lows, largely due to perceptions of incompetence and chaos in government rather than ideological shifts. Conservative support is now highly concentrated in the ‘Backbone Conservative’ segment, with both more Cameronite Established Liberals deserting the party and more socially conservative Loyal Nationals switching back from their 2019 vote, costing the Conservatives seats in both the Blue and Red Walls.  

The Conservatives should resist the temptation to simply try to outflank Reform UK on the right, as the number of Reform voters willing to return to the Conservatives will not be enough to form a majority, while aping the politics of Nigel Farage is likely to cost the Party further votes in the centre. 

Less than a third (31 per cent) of those who voted for Reform UK say they might otherwise have voted Conservative. The remaining two-thirds say they would have backed other parties - including almost as many who say they would have backed some combination of Labour, the Liberal Democrats or Greens. Others would not have voted at all. Taken together this implies that in the absence of Reform standing the Conservative’s would still have ended up with well under 200 seats in this election.

What’s more, those who abandoned the Conservative Party for Reform UK are the most likely to say that they would never vote Conservative again of all those who voted switched from the Conservative party at this election. 

If the Conservative Party is to recover it will have to start with restoring its reputation for economic competence and selecting a leader who can bring back voters who deserted the party to the left and the right. Rather than either or, voters who would back the Conservatives suggest a preference for a leader who can merge the appeal of both David Cameron and Boris Johnson. 

Sitting it out?

The 2024 election saw turnout fall almost to historic lows. Of those who opted out on election day, 38 per cent had voted in the 2019 election. While many non-voters said they would have voted Labour, the picture is somewhat more complicated than simply left-wing abstentionism alone.

Just four percent of non-voters stayed at home because they were sure that the party they supported was going to win. Complacency is not a sufficient reason for the significant drop in turnout. Overall, 2019 Conservative voters made up a greater proportion of 2024 non-voters than 2019 Labour voters. Their decision to abstain was active rather than passive, unable to back another party but wanting to show their disapproval for the Conservatives’ record. 

For 77 per cent of the 2019 Conservatives voters who abstained, this was the first time ever that they did not vote. This group exemplifies Conservatives who have lost faith in the Government they elected in 2019. The top reason 2019 Conservatives give for not voting is that they don’t trust any politicians and the main barriers they cite to voting Conservative centre around perceptions of the party as out-of-touch, corrupt and incompetent.  This depressed turnout exaggerated the Conservatives’ defeat - if the Conservatives had been able to mobilise these 2019 Conservatives in 2024 it could have tipped the scales in their favour in 33 seats without having to win back a single voter who switched to another party.

The fragmentation of the party system

The change election was also shaped by the rise of the smaller parties – the Liberal Democrats becoming the biggest third-party parliamentary force in a century, the Greens reaching record representation in Parliament, and Reform winning five seats and four million votes.

The efficiency of the smaller parties’ vote distribution varied significantly. The Liberal Democrats gained a quarter of all their votes from 35 seats, while the same proportion of Reform UK’s vote was spread more thinly over 97 seats, resulting in just five gains for the party that won over 4 million votes. 

While the spread of Reform’s vote prevented a bigger Parliamentary breakthrough in this election, the Party is now in second place in just under a hundred seats, many of those held by the Labour Party - suggesting a further frontline for possible defections from the governing party’s coalition. 

However, Reform also demonstrated a ceiling to their support in the 2024 election, with support for the Party falling back during the campaign with Nigel Farage’s comments about Ukraine, racism among Reform activists and questions about the party’s ability to govern all cited as barriers for people voting for the Party. 

Change across the UK

The desire for change was not limited to England. In Scotland the dramatic collapse of SNP representation (and Labour’s overperformance in Scotland) represented both frustration with the scandals and missteps that have dominated Holyrood following Nicola Sturgeon’s departure, but also voters placing a premium on good governance over independence. The main reason 2024 Scottish Labour voters (54 per cent) and Scottish Liberal Democrat voters (69 per cent) cite for not voting SNP is that they governed Scotland poorly.

The SNP were reduced just nine seats in Westminster because they lost support across the board – but crucial in the scale of their defeat were ‘soft independence supporters’.  In the 2019 General Election, the SNP enjoyed the support of 78 per cent of people that voted ‘Yes' in the Independence Referendum - in 2024 this has plummeted to 60 per cent.

SNP swing voters felt conflicted by a desire to bring about change in Government, with concerns that Labour MPs would be less effective than SNP MPs in bringing a distinctive Scottish voice to Westminster. Ultimately Labour allayed those concerns, but Labour MPs will have to find ways to demonstrate some autonomy from the national party if they are to avoid the charge that only the SNP can stand up for Scotland.

Looking ahead to the next set of Scottish Parliament elections the task for the SNP is to work out, if independence remains a less salient issue in Westminster politics, how to set out the positives of an SNP administration for Scotland as part of a devolved settlement.

Navigating fragmentation and disillusionment in politics

The unprecedented levels of political fragmentation and high abstentionism on the July 4^th election were driven by growing cynicism towards politics and a sense of futility that the political mainstream simply can’t deliver for ordinary people. Three in four (74 per cent) of the public now believe that Britain is rigged to serve the rich and influential. British voters are frustrated that their demands for change in the 2016 Brexit Referendum and 2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ election were not fully heeded. For that reason, the core mission of the next Government must be to deliver voters expectations of change or risk facing more voters turning to populism.

The unhappiness of voters towards politicians of all parties and backgrounds was reflected in incumbent MPs losing votes across parties, even in traditionally safe Labour seats, the party lost votes as a ‘pox on all your houses’ sentiment took hold. 

Navigating this fragmented electorate and the rise of populism will require political leaders to engage more authentically with a broader range of voter concerns and rebuild trust in the political process itself. That means understanding rather than dismissing the concerns of those who voted for populist parties and addressing the root causes of their discontent. 

While the solution does not lie in aping populists, mainstream politicians could do more to learn from the appeal of populist leaders. In focus group conversations even many of those who would never vote for Nigel Farage cited his authenticity and straight talking as something that marked him out in the political class. Similarly, those independent candidates who stood on pro-Gaza platforms also attracted support for some because they were seen as champions for communities that had felt neglected and taken for granted for too long.  

As well as considering what there is to learn from the appeal of politicians outside of the mainstream, politicians also need to act at the other end of the equation. That means being more proactive in calling out those who cross democratic guardrails, engage in intimidation or who perpetuated freedom-restricting harassment, as well as being more proactive in taking the fight to extremism. 

British politicians should learn from the experiences of those who have failed to quell the populist tide in Europe and elsewhere to avoid making the same mistakes here. The 2024 election represents a clear demand for change from the British public, but delivering on this mandate will require navigating low trust in politicians and institutions. The new Labour government must focus on tangible improvements to people's lives while demonstrating respect for ordinary citizens to rebuild faith in politics itself.