New research suggests two million older voters who did not vote for Labour in 2019 would consider doing so now.
A report from the Fabian Society found 28 per cent of over-55s in Britain were open to voting Labour – compared with a 21 per cent share of the vote among that age group at the last election.
Around two million of them said they did not vote for the party when Jeremy Corbyn faced Boris Johnson but would consider doing so under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.
The Fabian Society, a Labour affiliate, said a YouGov poll found that 32 per cent of people in the older age group thought Labour had moved in the “right direction” under Sir Keir.
The same poll found that 28 per cent said the opposite about the party’s direction – a proportion matched among under-55s.
The younger age group diverged on support for Sir Keir’s leadership, however, with only 23 per cent of them saying they thought he had taken the party in the “right direction”.
The poll was taken from 8-13 December, by which time news had broken of lockdown-breaking parties attended by the prime minister and other Conservatives.
Labour has historically struggled with older voters but the gap in support between age groups has grown in recent years.
Ipsos Mori’s post-2019 election survey found support for Labour among older voters had plunged to a record low, with just 17 per cent of over-65s and 27 per cent of 55 to 64-year-olds voting for the party.
Pundits have argued Labour has no chance of winning the next election – expected late next year or in spring 2024 – without pulling a significantly higher portion of the older vote. This latest research will offer hope.
The Fabian Society also held a series of focus groups with over-55 working class voters in England and Wales who had voted for Labour before but backed the Conservatives at the last election – a demographic Labour is desperate to appeal to.
The takeaway from the focus groups was “while Labour remains behind in the polls among over-55s, the gap is no longer so large that it is an insurmountable barrier to the party winning the next election”.
The results of the Fabian Society’s research will be seen as a strong positive for the party and will likely be taken as vindication of the politically rightwards shift under Sir Keir.
