{"id":1888,"date":"2020-07-01T09:33:05","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T09:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/?p=1888"},"modified":"2020-07-02T09:36:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T09:36:00","slug":"low-income-voters-the-2019-general-election-and-the-future-of-british-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/2020\/07\/01\/low-income-voters-the-2019-general-election-and-the-future-of-british-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Low-income voters, the 2019 General Election and the future of British politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">This report looks at the effect of low-income voters on the 2019 UK General Election, and how their motivations and concerns affected their choices.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/politics-international-relations\/people\/512\/goodwin-matthew\">Professor Matthew Goodwin<\/a> has published a new report with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighting the effect of low-income voters on the 2019 UK General Election, and how their motivations and concerns affected their choices.<\/p>\n<p>It explains Labour\u2019s defeat, the Conservative breakthrough in many traditional Labour areas, and what this reveals about British politics. Key to understanding this are the people struggling to stay afloat on lower than average incomes. Current economic and societal impacts of COVID-19 mean all political parties need to keep the focus of debate on this pivotal group.<\/p>\n<h3>Key points and recommendations<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Low-income workers, central to driving recent political change, are being affected the hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. Different social groups will have fundamentally different experiences of this crisis, and that may have profound political effects.<\/li>\n<li>The Conservatives are now more popular with people on low incomes than high incomes. Labour is as popular with the wealthy as with those on low incomes.<\/li>\n<li>Labour urgently need to revive their offer, particularly in light of the effect COVID-19 is having on low-income voters. They should reconnect with these voters not only through economic policies, but also by tapping into concerns about Britain\u2019s place in the world, immigration, law-and-order and rapid social change.<\/li>\n<li>The Conservative call to \u2018level-up\u2019 the nation and redistribute resources away from London to the regions, combined with support for Brexit, won many traditional Labour voters; but they\u2019ll need to work hard to retain that support.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/files\/2020\/06\/matthew-goodwin-01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1891 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/files\/2020\/06\/matthew-goodwin-01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/files\/2020\/06\/matthew-goodwin-01.jpg 200w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/files\/2020\/06\/matthew-goodwin-01-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>View the full report here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jrf.org.uk\/report\/low-income-voters-2019-general-election-and-future-british-politics\">https:\/\/www.jrf.org.uk\/report\/low-income-voters-2019-general-election-and-future-british-politics<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The report\u2019s findings were featured in the Daily Mail <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/UniKent\/status\/1275730876572319744\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/UniKent\/status\/1275730876572319744<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This report looks at the effect of low-income voters on the 2019 UK General Election, and how their motivations and concerns affected their choices. Professor &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/2020\/07\/01\/low-income-voters-the-2019-general-election-and-the-future-of-british-politics\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67700,"featured_media":1889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[807,131000,131002,37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67700"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1951,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions\/1951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/polir-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}