is there truth in old myths about why some groups are more likely to choose Labour?

Labour’s 2024 election win got here regardless of a collapse in assist amongst Muslim voters – a bunch which historically has been extremely loyal.

Labour’s share of the Muslim vote fell from 80% in 2019 to simply over 60% in 2024. Anger over the get together’s place on the battle in Gaza led many Muslim voters to change to unbiased candidates. Of the seven seats that Labour misplaced, 5 have Muslim populations of 25% or extra.

Labour must know whether or not these defections symbolize a long-term menace that might value future elections. That, in flip, requires an understanding of why, for many of the post-war interval, the overwhelming majority of ethnic minority voters have supported Labour.

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From June to September 2023, Focaldata surveyed 6,384 white voters and 4,780 ethnic minority voters, together with 2,249 of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean and African descent. A colleague and I at UK in a Altering Europe, together with Focaldata, have used this information to analyse the parable and actuality of ethnic minority assist for Labour.

There has, for a begin, lengthy been a perception that the relative deprivation of Britain’s ethnic minorities in comparison with white voters makes them extra leftwing on socioeconomic points.

There may be robust proof that essentially the most economically disadvantaged minority voters are the most probably to decide on Labour. Amongst voters of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean and African descent who earn lower than £25,000, there’s 93% chance that they’ll assist Labour.

These ethnic minorities are considerably extra seemingly – by 33 proportion factors – than low-income white voters to have leftwing financial preferences. The affiliation between socioeconomic standing and vote selection amongst white voters is far weaker. Low earnings white voters solely have a chance of 42% of supporting Labour.

As voters from these minority teams grow to be extra prosperous, they’re considerably much less more likely to vote Labour. Help for Labour stays regular for white voters throughout earnings ranges.

One other long-held perception has been that ethnic minorities understand events on the left as extra dedicated to tackling racial discrimination and are subsequently extra inclined to vote for them. However these in our 2023 pattern who mentioned that they’d vote Labour within the subsequent election didn’t seem like primarily motivated by considerations about racial discrimination.

Solely 7% of them pointed to racism and discrimination as crucial points when deciding to vote. Their priorities have been the NHS, financial development and poverty and inequality – the identical priorities as white Labour voters.

This doesn’t imply ethnic minorities really feel racial discrimination isn’t an issue. Two-thirds of survey respondents agreed that their ethnic background had made it troublesome to get forward. Nonetheless, this didn’t have a big impact on their vote selection. Those that strongly agreed on this level have been no extra more likely to vote for Labour than those that strongly disagreed.

Previous work additionally suggests minority teams vote with a “linked destiny” in thoughts. They view their particular person pursuits as inseparable from their group, which drives them to vote cohesively for a similar get together. A landmark 2013 examine discovered that prime ranges of Labour partisanship amongst ethnic minorities have been higher defined by group norms and sentiments than particular person attitudes and coverage preferences.

To check whether or not this holds true greater than a decade later, we introduced respondents with a listing of the way they could describe themselves (British, English, a member of a spiritual group, a member of an ethnic group, and so forth). We requested them to decide on the three descriptors they most recognized with and to rank them in precedence order.

If voters of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean and African descent recognized as being a member of an ethnic group or a part of a spiritual group as the primary or second most essential a part of their identification, they have been categorized as robust ethnic or spiritual identifiers. Those that did the other have been have been categorised as weak ethnic or spiritual identifiers.

We solely discovered a significant distinction within the chance of voting for Labour between robust and weak identifiers on the low earnings class. Nonetheless, the decline within the likelihood of voting for Labour when evaluating low and high-income voters is far smaller amongst robust identifiers than amongst weak identifiers.

This implies that non-public financial pursuits are a stronger affect for people who find themselves much less more likely to have a way of a linked destiny with their group. It’s attainable that voters who’ve a powerful sense of group attachment usually tend to base their vote selection on which get together they consider will pursue insurance policies which can be within the pursuits of others of their group.

Within the case of people in these ethnic minority teams, virtually half of whom are categorised as low earnings, that might imply voting Labour.

As a result of it got here from summer season 2023, the info on this evaluation was primarily based on a survey which largely predates anger over Labour’s response on Gaza and the very actual impression that had on individuals’s choices in 2024. The massive-scale defection of Muslim voters in 2024 might be understood as a specific kind of “linked destiny” which was a response to an distinctive state of affairs.

Nonetheless, one of many virtues of the timing of our survey was that it has allowed us to evaluate the structural explanations of voting behaviour of ethnic minorities that characterise electoral competitors throughout “regular occasions”.

Our evaluation has discovered weak or combined proof for 2 of the principle theories – racial discrimination and the linked destiny thesis – usually used to elucidate the excessive ranges of assist for left-leaning events amongst ethnic minorities. Though we discovered robust assist for the relative deprivation thesis, the outcomes from 2024 present that Labour’s stronghold over low-income ethnic minorities can’t be taken as a right.

In a better election, the assist of those voters, significantly within the 40 constituencies the place Muslim voters make up a sizeable share of the inhabitants, could possibly be essential.

Given the significantly robust relationship between low earnings and assist for Labour amongst sure ethnic minority teams, delivering on financial development and enhancing public companies should be a part of Labour’s technique. Nonetheless, by itself, it’s unlikely to sufficient.

Though our findings counsel linked destiny and racial discrimination aren’t typically important drivers of vote selection, the 2024 election exhibits that sudden occasions can considerably heighten the salience of identification and group for some voters. If Labour is to retain the assist of those communities, it should have to be extra conscious of their considerations over points comparable to Gaza and Islamophobia.