Yahoo Finance Tories are now the party of working class voters, election survey finds
The Conservatives are now the party of working class voters, new research has found.
A survey by YouGov found 48 per cent of C2DE voters - a bracket that includes skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers and unemployed people - supported the Tories in last week’s general election.
That’s a stark contrast with Labour, traditionally the party of the working class. Just 33 per cent of C2DE voters supported Jeremy Corbyn’s party on Thursday.
To make things worse for Labour, it had been supported by 42 per cent of C2DE voters in 2017, while the Tories were on 44 per cent.
It comes despite the Tory figurehead being Eton-educated millionaire Boris Johnson, who in July also picked a cabinet that was two-thirds privately educated.
However, a number of new Conservative candidates, including those who won historic Labour safe seats in the north, tended to be “self-made” and living locally, as opposed to people born into privilege being “flown in” from London. This was the case with Mr Johnson himself when he first became an MP in Henley in 2001.
As an example, Mark Jenkinson, who won in Workington - a constituency which has only been held by a Tory for three years of its 101-year existence - was a self-employed contractor working in the nuclear supply chain before his election.
— Read more from Yahoo News UK —
The strengths and weaknesses of leading Labour MPs in the frame to succeed Jeremy Corbyn
The night Jeremy Corbyn's socialist dream died
'Arrogant in the extreme': The story of Boris Johnson's first general election victory in 2001
The Tories also outperformed Labour in the ABC1 category of middle and upper class voters, with YouGov saying: “The Conservatives comfortably outperformed Labour across all social grades, further evidence that class is no longer a key indicator of how people vote.”
The YouGov survey interviewed 41,995 people who voted in last week’s election.
— Highlights: Election winners and losers —
