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Fragmented and dealigned: the 2024 British general election and the rise of place-based politics

Fragmented and dealigned: the 2024 British general election and the rise of place-based politics
Fragmented and dealigned: the 2024 British general election and the rise of place-based politics
While the outcome of the 2024 British general election signalled a resounding repudiation of the incumbent government, returning a 231-seat swing from the Conservatives to Labour, it did not radically overturn the geography of electoral outcomes in England and Wales. Indeed, demographic predictors of party vote for parliamentary constituencies at the aggregate-level mostly represented a continuation of recent trends – as did the areas where the two parties tended to ‘over’- and ‘under-perform’ those predictors. With the Conservative Party’s vote collapsing most in areas where it started highest (and where the Leave vote had been highest in 2016), Labour secured shock victories in relatively affluent parts of the South of England as well as retaking all the ‘Red Wall’ constituencies in the North of England that it had lost in 2019, despite its national vote share only increasing slightly. This represented the other end of the ‘realignment’ observed in 2019 – as the electoral tide went out on the Conservatives the relative weakening of their support in areas with graduates, middle class professionals and mortgage holders came home to roost. The election exposed a fragmented and marginal map, bequeathing a fragile electoral future despite the Starmer government’s large majority in parliament.
british politics, elections, political geography
0032-3179
Jennings, Will
2ab3f11c-eb7f-44c6-9ef2-3180c1a954f7
Furlong, Jamie
bc06a3b4-7907-47f4-87de-a3c7e1684ec2
Stoker, Gerry
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
Mckay, Lawrence
4ecf2fd8-3fbf-4a3c-9c22-6856fc1a09be
Jennings, Will
2ab3f11c-eb7f-44c6-9ef2-3180c1a954f7
Furlong, Jamie
bc06a3b4-7907-47f4-87de-a3c7e1684ec2
Stoker, Gerry
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
Mckay, Lawrence
4ecf2fd8-3fbf-4a3c-9c22-6856fc1a09be

Jennings, Will, Furlong, Jamie, Stoker, Gerry and Mckay, Lawrence (2024) Fragmented and dealigned: the 2024 British general election and the rise of place-based politics. The Political Quarterly. (doi:10.1111/1467-923X.13483).

Record type: Article

Abstract

While the outcome of the 2024 British general election signalled a resounding repudiation of the incumbent government, returning a 231-seat swing from the Conservatives to Labour, it did not radically overturn the geography of electoral outcomes in England and Wales. Indeed, demographic predictors of party vote for parliamentary constituencies at the aggregate-level mostly represented a continuation of recent trends – as did the areas where the two parties tended to ‘over’- and ‘under-perform’ those predictors. With the Conservative Party’s vote collapsing most in areas where it started highest (and where the Leave vote had been highest in 2016), Labour secured shock victories in relatively affluent parts of the South of England as well as retaking all the ‘Red Wall’ constituencies in the North of England that it had lost in 2019, despite its national vote share only increasing slightly. This represented the other end of the ‘realignment’ observed in 2019 – as the electoral tide went out on the Conservatives the relative weakening of their support in areas with graduates, middle class professionals and mortgage holders came home to roost. The election exposed a fragmented and marginal map, bequeathing a fragile electoral future despite the Starmer government’s large majority in parliament.

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Accepted/In Press date: 17 October 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 27 December 2024
Published date: 27 December 2024
Keywords: british politics, elections, political geography

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 497236
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/497236
ISSN: 0032-3179
PURE UUID: 0f0cdd0e-2f12-40fc-a0d3-3c4ae45c03e9
ORCID for Will Jennings: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9007-8896
ORCID for Gerry Stoker: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8172-3395
ORCID for Lawrence Mckay: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2071-3943

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Date deposited: 16 Jan 2025 17:39
Last modified: 22 Aug 2025 02:29

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Contributors

Author: Will Jennings ORCID iD
Author: Jamie Furlong
Author: Gerry Stoker ORCID iD
Author: Lawrence Mckay ORCID iD

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