The Labour Party won its lowest-ever share of the vote in deprived areas at the General Election, figures compiled by the FT show.
The Labour Party won its lowest-ever share of the vote in deprived areas at the General Election, figures compiled by the Financial Times show. Sir Keir Starmer dealt a historic defeat to Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives on July 4th, winning 412 seats to the Tories’ 121. The victory has been attributed to the “hyper-efficient distribution of the Labour vote”, which allowed the party to rack up seats despite its overall share of the vote being down on 2019. Data reporter John Burn-Murdoch has taken to social media to share one of the “under-appreciated” stats of the election. His research shows that Labour won its lowest-ever share of the vote in deprived areas (<50 per cent for the first time), and its highest-ever share in affluent areas. The dramatic flattening of the class gradient is steeper than Sir Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997, and contrasts starkly to previous Labour administrations during the Conservative’s time in office.
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Labour's landslide “victory” in numbers:
Voter turnout for the election was the lowest since 2001, at 60%.
Labour vote share was 33.7%, lower than in 2017 (41%) but slightly higher than 2019 (32.9%)
Labour's vote share in deprived areas was 49%.
That last is an indication of just how right-wing Labour has become. Sadly, and ironically, a lot of those lost Labour votes will have gone to Reform, which is far-right.