Labour under Jeremy Corbyn lost nearly 8% of their vote share from 2017,
resulting in the lowest number of seats the party has won in over 80 years (since
1935). Three factors combined to make these results a nightmare for Labour:
1. Around a quarter of its Leave-supporting voters in the old heartlands -
the so-called "Red Wall" - transferred their vote to the Conservatives;
we estimate the number at 700,000-800,000 voters, based on hundreds of
thousands of polling responses and the YouGov public MRP. Hundreds of
thousands more may have stayed at home, although we need to wait for
more definitive evidence on this point.
But crucially, a larger number of Labour's 2017 voters seem to have
switched to other Remain parties. We estimate that over 1.1 million of
2017 Labour Remainers switched to the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or
the SNP. And importantly, 200-250,000 of the 2017 Labour Leavers also
seem to have switched to these parties, whether because of "Bregret" or
concerns about the Labour leadership or manifesto.
3. Both of these switcher groups had very negative opinions of Jeremy Corbyn.
Both Datapraxis research and other studies find that this is the most
significant factor in Labour's decline; the Opinium finding that a lack of trust
in Corbyn's leadership was the main factor, followed a long way behind by
the Brexit balancing act and questions about the party's economic policies.
The circa 300,000 Labour Remainers who switched to the Conservatives
illustrate this vividly; our voter tribe analysis suggests that these people are
first and foremost Corbyn skeptics.