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Left Foot Forward > Published by Will Straw, May 24th 2010 at 6:00 pm

Labour’s problem is deeper than C2s

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It has almost become conventional wisdom to blame Labour’s defeat on a loss of support among C2s. The truth is that Labour lost Ds, Es, C2s and (to a lesser extent) As and Bs too.

In his leadership launch last week, David Miliband said, ”Among semi skilled workers our vote went down 18 per cent.” A few days before Liam Byrne wrote in the Guardian:

“In 2005, 43% of C2s were Labour. Now Mori says it’s down to just 23%.”

This was followed up in a Progress pamphlet published last week which asks “Why did Labour lose – and how do we win again?”. The shadow chief secretary’s figures were based on Ipsos-MORI’s election day poll and an initial sample of just 1,000. On Friday, they released their revised figures based on “more than 10,000 interviews”. As Declan Gaffney has expertly shown at Labour List:

“Labour’s vote share among the ‘C2’ demographic did fall in 2010, but by 11 percentage points, rather than 20 …

“In 1997, Labour had 59% of votes in [the DE] group; by 2010, this was down to 40%.”

Other surveys show a variation in the drop among C2s but support Mr Gaffney’s findings that the problem is just as severe among DEs. Stan Greenberg’s qualitative survey of 1,000 voters finds that support among C2s fell from 47 per cent to 34 per cent (-13%) while support among DEs fell from 47 per cent to 36 per cent (-11%). Meanwhile, ICM’s research shows that support among C2s and DEs fell from 47 per cent in 2005 to 31 per cent (-16%) and 33 per cent (-14%) respectively in 2010. But this data was based on a smaller sample than the definitive Ipsos-MORI survey.

Picture credit: Labour List

  • http://twitter.com/adam_douglas3/status/14635405895 Adam Douglas

    Reality Check moment! RT @leftfootfwd Labour's Problem is deeper than C2s http://bit.ly/byG3tw

  • http://twitter.com/leftfootfwd/status/14635245164 Left Foot Forward

    Labour's problem is deeper than C2s http://bit.ly/byG3tw

  • Declan Gaffney

    This many sound pedantic but bear with me. A fall from 47% to 34% is a 13 percentage point fall and a 28% fall (28= 13/47*100). To see why this distinction can be important, the 20 percentage point fall in Labour’s C2 share that Liam and others cited would have represented nearly 50% of the 2005 share. That just looked liek an implausibly big shift, which is why I thought it needed checking out.

  • Robert

    Or could it be that people are fed up of being treated like numbers.
    I’m not a number I’m a skilled worker who had an accident at work, who ended up looking to the Tories to give me a fair shake, because labour did not, you called me a scrounger and work shy, not all of us are scroungers in fact the majority of us worked hard, I did for thirty years and then bang. But you attacked me treated me worse then scum.

  • trevmax

    But Robert, why don’t you go and get another job? There are loads about. You can obviously read, write, spell and use a computer. There are 2.7 million on disability and a lot of us just don’t believe they are all real.

  • Mr. Sensible

    Robert, have you seen the Tory policy on welfair?

  • StevenL

    Labour are over-analysing this. The reason they have lost so much support is repeating ‘no boom and bust’ for years on end whilst operating policies that caused the mother of all boom and busts.

    People woke up, people felt lied to, people deserted labour in droves.

  • Robert

    God not again, nice to see real Labour on here, I’m classed as Paraplegic, I joined the new deal and of course pathways to work, and now I’m on workfare, my last interview with my job center was September last year.

    But your right we should work, or be gassed.

    The Tory welfare is the same as Labours, no different whats so ever, it’s just being told by a bunch of Labour MP’s I’m a scrounger while they helped them selves to Expenses does make me smile.

    Think I’ll accept the Tories for now, 48 years in Labour was enough

  • http://twitter.com/beckybradyleeds/status/14680200846 Rebecca Brady

    Interesting RT @leftfootfwd: Labour's problem is deeper than C2s http://bit.ly/byG3tw

  • http://bestblogs.labourhome.org/2010/05/24/labour%e2%80%99s-problem-is-deeper-than-c2s/ Labour’s problem is deeper than C2s « The best Labour blogs

    [...] More… [...]

  • http://billyblofeld.wordpress.com Billy Blofeld

    The Labour leadership race is a phoney war. Nobody is grasping the “economy nettle”.

    I have voted twice in recent years 2010 and 1997.

    Endlessly repeating the phrase “No return to boom and bust” – whilst it turned out Gordon had been chronically mismanaging the economy is the issue that tipped me over the edge and made me go out and vote.

  • trevmax

    Labour has zero economic credibility. We borrowed through a boom and almost got bankrupt when the bust came. Labour’s answer to this…reduce the deficit from eye-watering to 50% of eye-watering in 4 years. So we borrowed in the boom and we’d have been borrowing in the next one too. We have to reduce the deficit and have paid off some decent amount of debt before the next shock comes. and that could be soon considering what’s happening in the Euro area. Labour never ‘got’ economics. They probably never will.

  • http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/08/labours-lost-votes/ Labour’s shrinking C2 and DE vote | Left Foot Forward

    [...] made him the modernising candidate in the leadership election. Mirroring analysis published by Left Foot Forward in May, Miliband backed up his point about Labour’s lost voters in a study published this [...]