Dr Ceri Fowler
Career Development Fellow in Comparative Politics, St Hilda’s College, Oxford. My research uses quantitative methods to study public opinion and political behaviour. I am particularly interested in how and why gender influences political behaviour, especially vote choice, primarily in the UK and Europe.
@cerifowler
Email: ceri.fowler@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 2: Voters, polls and results
13. Forecasting a multiparty majoritarian election with a volatile electorate (Dr Hannah Bunting)
14. The emerging infrastructure of public opinion (Dr Nick Anstead)
15. A moving target? Voter segmentation in the 2024 British General Election (Prof Rosie Campbell)
16. Don’t vote, it only encourages them? Turnout in the 2024 Election (Prof Charles Pattie)
17. Cartographic perspectives of the 2024 General Election (Prof Benjamin Hennig)
18. Gender and vote choice: early reflections (Dr Ceri Fowler)
19. Changing Pattern amongst Muslim voters: the Labour Party, Gaza and voter volatility (Dr Parveen Akhtar)
20. Religion and voting behaviour in the 2024 General Election (Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, Dr Stuart Fox)
21. Failure to connect: the Conservative Party and young voters (Dr Stephanie Luke)
22. Youthquake for the progressive left: making sense of the collapse of youth support for the Conservatives (Prof James Sloam, Prof Matt Henn)
23. Values in the valence election (Prof Paula Surridge)
24. Tactical voting: why is it such a big part of British elections? (Thomas Lockwood)
Whilst being late to exhibit a “modern gender gap”, whereby women are more likely to vote for left-wing parties and men more likely to vote for right-wing parties, the UK did see this pattern in both 2017 and 2019. In both cases, gender gaps in party support were both larger in younger age groups and driven by gender differences in attitudes towards major issues at the election. In 2017, this was still austerity, but by 2019, gender differences in attitudes towards the EU were driving the gender gap.
We cannot know for certain yet whether there was a modern gender gap in the 2024 General Election, what the age by gender pattern of vote choice was, and why men and women voted differently if they did so. For that, we will need to wait for the post-election British Election Study. However, we can look to clues from polling and which issues were salient at the election, as well as pre-election data, to understand where gender gaps in party support might emerge and why. I focus on the GB-wide parties.
Starting with the election winners, Labour, the campaign polling did show a small (4-5 percentage points) gender gap on average, although there was considerable variation from pollster to pollster. The few polls taken since the election also present a mixed result. Focaldata have women’s support for Labour at 37% and men’s at 33%, which would be similar to that seen during the campaign, but Ashcroft has both men and women at 34% support for Labour. It seems likely that if there was an overall gender gap in Labour support at this election, it was small.
In some ways this is a surprise, given that Labour emphasised public services during the campaign. Women have historically prioritised these issues. This may be because women’s support has gone to other progressive, left-wing parties – especially younger women.
There is evidence of this both in pre- and post-election polls. Whilst many pollsters do not release gender-by-age breakdowns, we do have them from just prior to polling day from Norstat, whose polling was close to the election result, and from Focaldata post-election. Norstat found that support for the Green party was 3 percentage points higher among women aged 18-34 than men; Focaldata similarly found that support for the Green party was 4 percentage points higher among women aged 18-34 than men.
Whilst we cannot yet know why this is the case, it may be that Labour’s failure to call quickly for a ceasefire in Gaza or perceived lack of support for Trans rights has resulted in some strongly progressive women transferring their support to the Greens. We also know that women are more worried about climate change than men, which may well explain why women are supporting the Greens.
However, examining the gender by age breakdowns from these polls also show higher support for Labour from younger women than younger men – by 4 percentage points in the Focaldata poll and 8 in Norstat. Whilst the Green party may have received support from some younger women who have previously supported Labour, the evidence we have so far does not suggest Labour support among young women has collapsed entirely.
The Liberal Democrats also put public services at the centre of their policy offer, especially health and social care. However, there is little evidence of a gender gap in Liberal Democrat support in the sources mentioned above, either overall or among specific age groups.
We also do not see a gender gap in support for the Conservatives in either the pre- or post- election polling we have so far, although Focaldata do show lower support for the Conservatives among young men than young women. Where there is a significant – and much-reported – gender gap is between men’s and women’s support for Reform, especially but not exclusively among younger voters. Across pre-election polling and in the post-election sources we have, women show around 5 percentage points lower support for Reform than men.
This is unsurprising given that women previously showed lower support for UKIP, the previous party of Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, and as Reform have done little to appeal directly to women. It has also been suggested that young men in particular have been drawn to Reform through social media, but we should be cautious as we have little evidence to prove this to date.
How should we summarise gender and vote choice in 2024? Whilst we should be cautious without data with a larger sample size to examine sub-groups, we can be relatively confident that women, especially younger women, were more supportive of left-wing parties and men more supportive of right-wing parties. Thus, whilst the Conservative-Labour gender gap at this election may be smaller, the gender gap in left-right support overall seems likely to have persisted. Why remains an open question until the data comes in, albeit that, as previous elections, policy divides are a likely driver of gender gaps.
