Lord Ashcroft polls: How Britain voted and why

[NonnyMouse1337]

I've always found the Lord Ashcroft polls interesting. Although he is a Tory, he does a good job of being impartial and gathering valuable data and stats.

Someone posted about his work in another thread, but it's buried under all the conversations, so I've decided to put it in a separate thread for discussion.

Maybe it's not particularly suited to a feminist forum but since we are currently having discussions around the election results, it seems like a reasonable thing to post.

lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-2019-general-election-post-vote-poll/

As a complete amateur, I've been looking at the very first graph and wondering.....

• We know this election has been a sort of re-run of the Brexit referendum, so let's assume a vote for Conservative or Brexit Party is most likely a vote for Leave.

• A vote for LibDem, SNP, Green or Labour is generally a vote for Remain or at least a fairly soft Brexit.

I say this because the very last graph asks how people would vote if Brexit wasn't an issue and most voters would still stick to their choices, so although a small percentage would move around, I'm naively going with a simple correlation between elected party and view on Brexit.
I'm ignoring the Other category as it seems like a random bunch that could be either Leave or Remain.

Would that be a correct way of looking at the data?

With that in mind....

Conservative and Brexit got 47% while Labour, LD, SNP, Green got 52%.
Seems like overall there's no desire for Brexit or a particularly hard one?

Men are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour.
The male vote is 50% for Conservative and Brexit; and 49% for Labour, LD, SNP, Green.

The female vote is 44% for Conservative and Brexit; and 54% for Labour, LD, SNP, Green.

Every age group apart from 55 onwards shows more support for Labour, LD, SNP, Green than Conservative + Brexit.

I could not find an explanation of what the codes for the socioeconomic groups were, but of the four types, only the C2 category has more votes for Conservative and Brexit Party.

If we ignore the Leave/Remain angle entirely, it still begs the question of why the Conservatives have such a large number of seats and are hailed as the party with a mandate to lead the country when the vast majority do not want them or their policies? How is this democratic?

Goosefoot I see the appeal of having one person represent your specific area, but the winner-takes-all approach leaves it open to parties trying to gerrymander boundary lines and leaves everyone else feeling unrepresented because you cannot vote for a party you really want.

Rumboogie are there types of PR that have better ways of breaking stalemates or stopping stagnation when it comes to government formation?

I don't see how FPTP keeps extremists out. The whole Brexit fiasco kicked off because of extremists in the Conservative party.

I guess compared to other posters, I feel that people should be able to vote for political parties that they feel best reflects their opinion and see some reasonable representation of this reflected in Parliament. I don't have to like it or agree with it, but I would support a person's choice to vote UKIP or BNP.

If extremist parties are gaining popularity, that's a clear indication of the abject failure of society and state to address deep seated issues. Extremist parties don't gain traction if citizens are happy and feel represented and see evidence of their needs being addressed by successive governments.
Extremist parties thrive off instability and the dominant parties neglecting people's concerns and sweeping them under the carpet.

Governments in UK and Europe have consistently avoided concerns around issues like immigration because it's not politically correct to talk openly about it. And we end up with growing hostility and misinformation spread by opportunistic groups.

Political parties should be able to persuade voters based on sound arguments. Ignoring people's concerns won't make the issues go away.

I’ve seen share of votes being used in Scotland too. SNP only got 45% share of the vote, is this a mandate for independence. Tory’s got 43%, nobody’s questioning their mandate, SNP won over 80% of available seats, that’s how the cookie crumbles in FPTP system.

Labour weren’t a ‘remain’ party so you can’t take a vote for them as a vote for remain.

Equally not everyone who voted for SNP were voting for independence. I know someone who voted for them because they were remain but would definitely vote against independence in a referendum.

Amortentia yes, I personally don't think 45% is a mandate for independence (even though I do support an independent Scotland), but I don't see why a 45% for SNP should be criticised by people when the 43% for Conservative doesn't raise any eyebrows.

Birdsfoottrefoil that's why the very last graph in the Ashcroft polls is interesting.
If Brexit wasn't an issue, 84% would still vote Labour and 87% would still vote SNP.

I think OP is absolutely correct that labour were a remain party or soft Brexit party, as the link she posted shows. Most labour leavers in 2017 moved to coding Tory in 2019.

Voting obvs

Many people voted for SNP for their left of centre policies and opposition to Brexit though not because they want independence. The SNP downplayed independence in their campaign. Labour and the lib dems were seen as less credible and less likely to win.