New poll finds only privileged people will vote for Labour - but why?

[ProudAmberTurtle]

This is a new IPSOS poll. It finds that among the least well off in society, support for Labour has collapsed - it's now just 10%.

Even among people who are 'just about coping' financially, they're a distant fourth in the polls, and would be wiped out if it was just them voting.

But - here's what might be surprising - among wealthy people they are first in the polls, in fact their lead is so big that if only rich people could vote, it would be a landslide for Labour.

Any thoughts as to why it is now that only the most privileged people in society are voting Labour?

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2026-04/Ipsos%20Apr%202026_Political%20Monitor%20charts_Public.pdf

I think you need to explain why immigration impacts financial comfort.

There's plenty of obvious reasons, but off the top of my head:

1. Immigrants, especially recent or lower-skilled arrivals, disproportionately enter low-wage, semi/unskilled service, care, construction and hospitality jobs. Poorer UK-born workers (lower education, bottom of wage distribution) compete most directly with them.
2. Rapid population growth from immigration increases demand for housing, especially in urban/low-cost areas.
3. Poorer natives compete for school places, GP appointments and social housing. Wealthier people use private alternatives and are less sensitive to queues or overcrowding.
4. Higher-income areas are more insulated, with better resources for integration and less direct exposure.

Any data to back that up ?

I think it’s also more than finance and comfort. Besides actual impacts, and perceived impacts (which might be true or not), or even incorrect conclusions. There’s also expectations.

People who are educated, tend to move to big cities or strong economic areas which are melting pots. So no one is expecting a city to be anything but multicultural. It’s transient, it’s mixed and diverse. You don’t really notice immigration in this setting as it’s expected.

But this country is much larger than a few cities. People do expect local areas to be native. You can baulk at the word native there and I chose that specifically because I am not just talking about ‘white’ or British. Cornish people expect Cornwall to be Cornish. Welsh people expect wales to stay Welsh. Midlanders do not want to be flooded by wealthy southerners increasing their house prices. People are tribal whether we like it or not.

Cornish people are not racist to white people buying second homes. And two thirds of the country are not simply racists. I believe people do quite simply have the expectation that England (outside major cities) remains predominantly English and in recent decades its becoming increasingly not so at a rapid rate in many medium and small towns across the country.

I think the villages and the countryside are still predominantly English but these people visit towns for amenities and services. So they are not exempt from noticing the change.

I'm probably going to vote reform. Used to vote Tory. Uni Educated, further professional qualification, in high tax bracket by about 26 until I retired at 51.

So I don't think I fit your criteria.

My reasons for voting for them is right now the UK borrows money each month. That means the debt we pay is going up and up. The rate we get charged to borrow is also high now as we (the UK) are now being recognised as making a financial balls up of things.

So I'll say that again each month the UK spends more than it brings in.

Reform are the only one that has recognised some of the problems and are saying they will change things. This is not what people want to hear. It's what needs to be done. So the NHS - we can't afford it so it needs to go in it's current form. Heck we can't afford it and it doesn't even work very well in lots of areas either. So not a vote winner to say this but true all the same.

Other things that might be unpleasant but are also true. We have too many people now squashed into a small island. Everywhere is too crowded. Roads, small houses, noise, schools are overcrowded, can't get GP appointment. Charity is one thing but at what point did we stop looking after our own country and our own citizens. Someone needs to tell UK to put it's own oxygen mask on before it helps others. So yes we do need someone to do something about immigration. Not because we hate people from other places but because we are drowning and we need to help ourselves (illegal ones who commit crimes should be put on a row boat and pushed back out to sea, no excuses). Why are we paying France a fortune to stop them leaving France and coming here. We should employ our own people (creating jobs) and control it ourselves.

Law and Order - policing is on it's knees. Shoplifting, antisocial behaviour, lack of respect. It's a mess. The number of frontline officers is shocking low. Reform have promised us better law and order and more fitting punishment.

They are by no means perfect. They are keeping the triple lock which I actually think is a mistake (they are obviously wanting to retain the grey vote of which I am one). However I think it would be fair to just increase state pension by say inflation each year and be done with it. However they have promised to address our bloated welfare bill. Far too many people not working due to conditions that do not warrant it.

Again not what alot of people want to hear but it needs to be done.

Do I think NF is in it for himself. Of course he is. They all are. I actually think KS is a decent man but he just does not have the balls to run a country and make tough decisions. We need someone who is going to change things because they need changed and they are not going to be popular when they do it. Remember Maggie Thatcher - lots hated her (I didn't) but dam she was tough and firm and didn't back down. It's a shame we can't clone her.

We help ourselves now (and it's going to be ugly) or we wait for the markets to charge us so much interest we can't afford it (or worse refuse to lend to us at all). Alternatively we wait for the IMF bailout (seventies anyone?) and then they will slash welfare, NHS anyway.

The ugly truth is the UK is currently not financially viable. We are very vunerable to the current war because we import so much of our power and so much of our food. Growth is stagnant, inflation is a problem (again anyone remember the seventies with inflation). Unemployment is rising, welfare is rising and the UK now pays more to borrow than Greece and Morocco. Now that is just embarrassing.

You watch the UK borrowing rate shoot up if Farage gets a whiff of power. The IMF would be on the doorstep in weeks.

Do I have any data to support points that state that wealthy people are more likely to send their children to private schools than poor people, or that immigration puts more pressure on housing?

I absolutely agree with your post re leadership but do you really think KS is a strong leader? He has made lots of U turns and does not seem able to make tough decisions at all. He has also increased welfare and given pay rises to train drivers for one (which seemed strange to me) in a time where the UK pays out more each month than it brings in. Not a good position to be in.

I thought he was right to means test the WFA for pensioners but then he u-turned on it. This type of thing has lost him credibility.

If I saw him recognising the financial hole we are in and slowly but steadily start fixing it then I would be okay with him only making baby steps. This does not seem to be happening at all though.

Have Reform actually costed up any of their policies? Or do they just say pithy things like "take benefits off scroungers"?

I'm not a Starmer enthusiast but I agree that it's probably not good for our economy/international standing to vote in a populist grifter

No that is not right at all. The markets want to see someone make good financial decisions to bring the UK back to financial viability.

So for a country in debt who increases this debt each month good decisions are things like cutting spending, growing economy, investing in industries, apprenticeships for young people.
Bad decisions that signal to the market we have no intention of trying to return to financial viability is pumping more money into the NHS, an ever increasing welfare bill etc

It's actual a move to the left that will cause the markets alarm. So if KS gets the boot and is replaced by someone more left wing or worse god forbid the greens were in charge.

This was your claim. Quote :

ProudAmberTurtle · Today 20:17
There's plenty of obvious reasons, but off the top of my head:
Immigrants, especially recent or lower-skilled arrivals, disproportionately enter low-wage, semi/unskilled service, care, construction and hospitality jobs. Poorer UK-born workers (lower education, bottom of wage distribution) compete most directly with them.
Rapid population growth from immigration increases demand for housing, especially in urban/low-cost areas.
Poorer natives compete for school places, GP appointments and social housing. Wealthier people use private alternatives and are less sensitive to queues or overcrowding.
Higher-income areas are more insulated, with better resources for integration and less direct exposure.

Do you have any data to back any of that up ? That is what I asked.

You replied, quote :

"Do I have any data to support points that state that wealthy people are more likely to send their children to private schools than poor people, or that immigration puts more pressure on housing?"

You never mentioned private schools in the bit I was asking for data for. You did mention housing pressure though. You mentioned a lot in fact. Any data ?

Actually things in the UK are way worse than that. So many people don't understand our financial position at the moment. We need to take welfare of the 'scroungers' yes. We also unfortunately need to take welfare off lots of people who are probably genuine too. It needs to become a very basic bones safety net only for the most severely disabled.

The only sensible borrowing we should do is if it is to grow the country, boost the economy (in other words the borrowing will result in increased financial stability)

Lots of people will start shouting about should we just let people die in the gutters. Well we didn't have a welfare system 80 years ago or an NHS and given that we don't appear to be able to afford them anymore..............
Horrible that we are going backwards. Yes absolutely. Horrible the UK is now in decline after our glorious past as world leader. Yes awful. However that is the truth. What we could afford yesterday is not what we can afford today and the sooner we start recognising this the better.

Of course none of us want to live through this but we are going to be in deep shit if the borrowing dries up. I actually think the politicians might prefer the IMF to come in and make the tough decisions and then they can hide behind them.

Yes a move left on borrowing and spending would do it.

And yet all of @Amiacoolorwarmcolour's points are true.

We left the EU, the promised £350m per however-long-it-was for the NHS never materialised, yet people who voted Leave are planning to vote for Farage, the principal Leaver's, party. Explain why people are voting for someone who has already provably lied to them.

Explain why people on benefits are voting to cut benefits.

Explain why people don't seem to be able to do a basic cause-and-effect analysis on something as simple as "if Reform win and cut benefits, what will happen to my UC?"

If it's not that people are simply too stupid to figure it out, then why is it?

Agree. Circulate the money instead of it being hived off.

The thing that no one can really say is that the government has to subsidise wages with UC because people cannot sustain work and a state of productivity when they are unable to stay fed and housed. It isn't a softly-softly decision to top up people's wages if it's the only thing keeping them in work. There also aren't enough job vacancies going around for everyone who needs one, much less a surfeit of jobs suitable for anyone with a health condition or any kind of caring responsibility. Further impoverishing the workforce won't save the economy.

How was I supposed to know which "bit" you were asking for data for?!

In fact I'm still not sure what bit you want data for, but if it's for the point about jobs then: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/

@ConstantlyPeeing

I actually think the politicians might prefer the IMF to come in and make the tough decisions and then they can hide behind them.

Nail on the head. I've said the same thing many times on threads like this. Our current political leaders are too scared/incompetent to make the changes we need, hence the re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titannic of the last couple of decades. They either don't know what to do or are too frightened of losing their political careers (and lucrative consultancy deals afterwards) to do what needs doing. Look at Starmer's U-turns forced by his back-benchers!

Keir Starmer said that women can have penises. This was a lie. People still voted for him.

I agree that it would be better if people didn't keep voting for politicians who are obviously lying to them.

@RedTagAlan

If you want some data on the schools front then that’s easily found online.

I actually noticed it as part of my choosing schools last year. But had a look again today when schools were bought up out of interest.

I don’t know where you live but if you go on this website… go to the map. Pick the most impoverished nearby area and click primary schools. You then select one, go to download data and there you will find the number of children with English as a first language.

In the poorest area near us (less than a mile away) the English as a first language are minority.

We are a stones throw away but can afford a house in a slightly nicer area and ours jumps to 70% English as first language.

Go to the little village 5 minute drive away and it jumps to 90% English as first language.

So whilst it’s not direct data on immigration and says as such in a big box at the top; imo it’s a proxy which I do think reflects reality that the parents they are conversing with at the school gate are more likely to be non British.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk

That would be why The Times is saying today that moving Reeves would be catastrophic? Farage would have exactly the same effect as Truss. In all probability even worse.

Well, I suppose when you put a pile of claims in, you should be able to back them all up.

That document you posted. Key points in the header are:

• The number of jobs in the UK economy is not fixed. Migrants compete with existing workers in the UK for jobs, but they also cause the number of jobs to increase

• Research suggests that the impacts of migration on wages and employment prospects for UK-born workers are small

• Low-wage workers are more likely to lose out from immigration, while medium and high-paid workers are more likely to gain, but the effects are small

• The wage effects of immigration are likely to be greatest for resident workers who are migrants themselves

I have removed the links, because the article is there. I have bolded some bits.

But digging into the doc, we get :

First, immigration had little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers. Second, where an impact was found, it was usually concentrated among certain groups – i.e. a negative effect for those with lower education and a positive effect for those with higher levels of education. And third, the impact may depend on the economic cycle; some—though not all—studies have found adverse effects on employment or unemployment, specifically during downturns.

So the document you presented as evidence for that claim does not appear to backup your claim. A small negative impact on low skilled, and a small positive impact for skilled. And this of course.

"immigration had little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers. "

The biggest impact is on migrant workers themselves.

So good of you to be concerned about them.

Britain has fallen in the world because we mined out all our minerals and cut down our forests. We don't have raw materials any more. For a while, we survived by pillaging what other places had, aka "having an empire". We are dependent on imports for even essentials like food and energy. Attempts to reinvent ourselves as a "knowledge economy" are doomed to failure because ideas are easily stolen and the people of other countries are smart.

Attempts to "green" our energy supply are making this dependency on imports even worse, as we cover farmland with solar panels and wind turbines. These renewable options are expensive, prevent the use of the farmland as farmland save for limited grazing, and harm their immediate environment. What the turbine brigade won't tell you is how many birds and insects die on the blades of those things. The plants under solar panels are deprived of light and die.

What would get us out of a lot of this mess would be a commitment to building lots and lots of nuclear power stations, using the same small reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers. The British and US implementations of this military technology are pretty safe, with the last major incident on a US vessel being in the late seventies using much older technology than we have now. The French have already widely adopted nuclear power for civilian electricity generation and are laughing all the way to the bank as they sell us their surplus electricity.

Having a benefit system that supports only the most severely-disabled will cost more in the long run and people will die. It's counter-productive.

It doesn't look like you put the correct prompt into the AI bot that you asked to answer the question.

The Migration Observatory summary you quoted actually does support the point I made. It explicitly states:

“Low-wage workers are more likely to lose out from immigration, while medium and high-paid workers are more likely to gain”

and

“where an impact was found, it was usually concentrated among certain groups – i.e. a negative effect for those with lower education and a positive effect for those with higher levels of education.”

That is exactly the distributional effect I was referring to. The fact that the average impact across all workers is small doesn’t erase the fact that the negative effects fall disproportionately on lower-skilled and lower-paid UK-born workers. That’s basic economics - adding supply at the bottom end of the labour market puts downward pressure there.