Pollsters love to taxonomize the British voter. I still remember discovering I was “Jam and Jerusalem” in YouGov’s segmentation of the country for Sunder Katwala’s British Future in 2013. Twee, maybe. Simplistic? Definitely. But it can be helpful to segment the nation along vibes-based lines. And More in Common’s latest effort to define the electorate is successful: you belong to one of seven types, they say. That’s at least more nuanced than talking about Britain solely through the prism of the Red and Blue walls. And, it’s better than than binning red-brick Britain off into being just “left-behind”, too.
But all this presentation I feel misses what the dominant strand is and what isn’t. There’s seven segments. But the seven segments aren’t of equal size. The Times writeup struggles to tell me that. You only know your segment’s size once you complete the quiz.
Now analysing the segments in isolation isn’t quite so exciting as analysing them relative to one another. Most are exhausted and irate with the status quo. ‘Progressive activists’ make up more than one-third of the ‘left front’ in Britain. ‘Traditional conservatives’ are the smallest section of the country going. ‘Established liberals’, undoubtedly the demographic David Cameron’s Tories went to such great lengths to entice in 2010, make up only nine per cent of the population today.
And how they vote – well, take a look. Four of the seven segments are significantly Reform friendly right now. What does that tell us?
Yep, that’s a broad coalition. When Ukip was on the ascendancy there were plenty of people dismissing the party’s voter as little more than retired half-colonels who hate the EU. It was nonsense then. And it would be utter insanity to claim now. These segments show that Reform’s appeal is anything but narrow.
Which makes their rise all the more frightening, if not absolute.
Continuous council by-election wins, not just in the north and midlands but the affluent south too can be explained through these segments. The Reform zeal has attracted not just those who want to smash things up for reasons of immigrant angst – and then some. But also those less socially conservative: even amongst these so-called “sceptical scrollers”, where voters are quite split on whether Britain should allow more or fewer immigrants in, Reform has a healthy lead over its opposition.
Segmenting Britain is like this is fun. And it has value. Voters don’t see themselves voting on single issues alone. They marry up to packages, to brands, to visions. Most voters agreed with the detail of Corbynomics, of wealth taxes and public ownership. But they didn’t come running for the Corbyn brand thanks to lesser appreciated sentiments about trust and confidence, about identity and belonging, that felt alien to Corbyn’s Labour party.
One could agree with everything put about in Rachel Reeves’ Spending Review. But if you’re insecure as to the state of the nation, irritated with immigrants and conspiratorial about systems, you’re unlikely to give the chancellor full marks. Or any marks. Vibes matter.
[See more: The OBR is always wrong]
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