Prof Rosie Campbell
Professor of Politics, King’s College London. Her publications cover the subjects of voting behaviour, public opinion, the politics of diversity and political recruitment. Rosie has presented eight episodes of Radio Four’s Analysis most recently on ‘Does it matter who our MPs are?’
@ProfRosieCamp
Email: rosie.campbell@kcl.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)
During the 2019 campaign Conservative party commentators and strategists were focused on securing the support of so called ‘Workington man’. The centre right think tank Onward coined the term to describe a crucial target, Brexit supporting voters in historically Labour constituencies whose main concerns were immigration and regional economic inequality. As with all voter segmentation the term is an oversimplification of reality, but it conveys an image that brings together the characteristics of voters the party needed to persuade. These voters were disproportionately middle aged and older men, without university degrees living in post-industrial parts of Britain.
In the two years preceding the 2019 election a quick Nexis search of national newspapers suggests that there were 174 stories that included the term, it was everywhere. The combination of the ‘get Brexit done’ message, with a promise of economic ‘levelling up’ proved a very powerful electoral strategy. Workington men gave the Conservatives, under Boris Johnson, an historic victory securing seats in ‘red wall’ constituencies never previously held by the party. The success was built on an unlikely electoral coalition among economically and socially liberal voters in more prosperous parts of the country and socially conservative but economically more leftwing voters in traditional Labour heartlands.
We now know that this coalition was exceedingly fragile. In the two years prior to the 2024 Election ‘Workington man’ remained a popular label used to describe voters (71 references made in national newspapers); but he was joined by ‘Stevenage Woman’ (74 references), ‘Whitby Woman’ (28 references) and ‘Waitrose Woman’ (25 references).
In April 2023 the thinktank ‘Labour Together’ argued that Labour could not secure a working majority simply by regaining the support of ‘Workington Man’ in the 30 red wall seats, they also had to persuade ‘Stevenage Women’ in 120 other constituencies. Stevenage women were younger voters, disproportionately women, living in marginal seats, who were struggling with the cost of living, concerned about the NHS, had previously voted Conservative but were now undecided.
In June 2023 More in Common added the term ‘Whitby Woman’ to the lexicon; these were undecided, home owning older voters living in suburbs and small towns, who backed Brexit and previously voted Conservative but were worried about the state of the NHS and public services. This group is disproportionately female because, although women voted for Brexit in equal proportions to men, they tend to give the issue less priority and are less attracted to Reform.
Finally, ‘Waitrose Woman’ was a Liberal Democrat target in the campaign. The term has been in circulation since at least June 2022, when the Financial Times ran an article claiming that she was key to the Conservatives regaining popular support. They argued that the focus on socially conservative voters in red wall seats had driven away socially liberal but economically right-wing voters in the Conservative heartlands. Waitrose women were described as economically well off, small ‘c’ Conservatives, who love British institutions (BBC and the National Trust), were in favour of remaining in the EU, were alienated by culture wars debates and concerned about pollution.
There is a common theme running throughout these voter segmentations in 2024; it is no coincidence that they all identified woman as a key electoral targets. Women are over-represented among the undecided voters who make up their minds how to vote later in the campaign, but they are equally likely to turn out and vote. Thus, when party strategists are scanning through polling data to identify specific sections of the electorate to target, women are often overrepresented. The focus in 2024 on women voters was a correction to the 2019 campaign where the emphasis was most definitely on Workington Man. Whilst the Conservatives secured an historic victory in 2019 their support among men was notably higher than among women.
The labels Stevenage and Whitby Woman drew attention to concerns about the NHS and the cost of living crisis, which are more often cited as the most important problems facing the country by women than men. Another addition was the focus on Waitrose Woman. Living in historically safe and economically prosperous seats, her vote was taken for granted by the Conservative party; much as Workington Man was arguably neglected by Labour from 1997. The consequence for the Conservative party is the mirror of Labour’s drumming in the red wall in 2019. The Liberal Democrats cut through in swaths of Conservative heartlands in the ‘blue wall’ in 2024. Seats that had been held by the Conservatives throughout the modern period were taken by the Liberal Democrats standing on a platform of prioritising care, education and pollution, with a subtle hint of remainism.
We will need to wait for the British Election Study 2024 data to draw strong conclusions about how accurate these nomenclatures were for describing the sections of the electorate that helped Labour and the Liberal Democrats break through in their target constituencies, and beyond. The Conservatives lost support across the board, but I suspect that these segmentations remained critical to how their lost votes were divided, with Reform and Labour making gains among Workington Men, Labour winning back a significant proportion of Stevenage and Whitby women and the Liberal Democrats securing an unprecedented proportion of Waitrose women.
