You've really got a hold on me - maybe

Liberal Democrat voters in seats won and elsewhere

Thirty (😱) years ago I was working on the 1992 Scottish Election Study and spent a few hours planning a wonderful analysis of the Scottish Liberal Democrat vote, only to open the dataset and find that our extensive survey of the Scottish electorate (957 respondents) had just 89 of them. In 2024 we are lucky to have much larger samples to work with and so this piece can draw on a sample of nearly 3000 Liberal Democrat voters across Britain thanks to the British Election Study Internet panel.

Thinking about the 2024 election I have found it is often difficult to reconcile the results at the constituency level with individual level behaviour - analysing the Liberal Democrat vote is no exception. Because of the concentrated and highly successful targetting of particular seats by the party it is likely that there may be key differences between those who voted Liberal Democrat in a target seat and those who voted for the party elsewhere, despite a relative lack of cues to do so.

For the Liberal Democrats to hold on to the seats it won in 2024, the voters in those seats are more critical than those who voted for the party elsewhere (a discussion about the electoral system for another time). This analysis breaks that sample of 2024 voters up in two ways. First to look at differences between Liberal Democrat voters in seats the party won and those elsewhere (TDLR: There aren’t really any of note). And then within the seats the party won those explicitly stating that they really preferred another party. (It is a sign of the resources we now have that this very niche sample of Liberal Democrat voters who live in seats the Liberal Democrats won but who actually preferred another party is almost half the size of the entire sample for Scotland in 1992).

I split Liberal Democrat vote into three groups (unweighted/weighted sample sizes, weighted data used throughout):

1. Voted Liberal Democrat in a seat they didn’t win (2102/1731)

2. Voted Liberal Democrat in a seat they won and the party was their first choice (773/939)

3. Voted Liberal Democrat in a seat they won but really preferred another party (463/558)

For context, in seats the Liberal Democrats won those who preferred another party predominantly preferred either Labour (67%) or the Green party (28%)

The piece explores what these groups have in common, and where they may be important differences. Overall though, this seems to be a very positive picture for the Liberal Democrats as I show below these groups are very similar across demographics and priorities. But with a word of warning that they should not take their votes for granted.

There are strong similarities in the demographics of age, gender, education level and social class between the groups.

All three groups of Lib Dem voter are very likely to have a university level education, they are marginally more likely to be female than male and over half are in professional occupations. A noteworthy difference is that those who voted LibDem in seats the party won, but who preferred another party, are younger than other LibDem voters. Around 1 in 3 of this group were aged under 35.

The different groups of Liberal Democrat voter also share key priorities for each group, just over 40% gave the economy as the most important issue facing the country, around 18% said health and around 10% said the enviroment. In terms of key policy priorities there should be little to worry the Liberal Democrats in holding this coalition of voters together.

However, there are some aspects which may pose a challenge. Those who vote for the LibDems but preferred another party are considerably more ‘left’ leaning than those for whom the LibDems were their first choice. This is true both in terms of their positions on the economic left-right value scale and in terms of their own self-perceptions.

While left-right self placement can be a difficult measure to interpret it does give us some useful insight into how voters perceive themselves. In this case, those who voted LibDem but preferred another party place are more likely to place themselves to the left on this scale than the other LibDem voters (both of these groups skew slightly left but are clustered in the centre).

This is confirmed by looking at the value groups these voters are drawn from. Almost half of those who voted for the Liberal Democrats but preferred another party are located in the ‘liberal-left’ group.

While other LibDem voters are also drawn from the left leaning groups they are more evenly spread and in addition around one in five are drawn from the ‘Centre-moderate’ group. In both self-perception and value positions, the groups that voted LibDem and did not prefer another party are more similar than those who preferred another party (as previously noted the majority of these preferred the Labour party or the Greens and this shows in their value positions).

However, this group are especially noteworthy in their dislike of the Conservatives.

Almost 6 in 10 of those who voted Lib Dem but preferred another party give the Conservatives 0 out of 10 when asked how much they liked the party. Far more than among other LibDem groups (who nonetheless give the party very low scores) and marginally more than among Labour voters as a whole (54% 0/10). It is this dislike of the Conservatives which motivates tactical voting, but it is also a willingness, after a decade, to forgive the LibDems their part in the coalition government.

This is important for Liberal Democrat strategy for the future. These voters who won them scores of seats in the South of England did so because they really wanted to defeat the Conservatives and because the Liberal Democrats hadn’t upset them recently. To hold onto these votes both of these things will need to remain the case. While the former can almost be taken as read, the later is a key challenge for the party as it juggles these voters with those who chose the Liberal Democrats as their first choice party but who may be more willing to consider the Conservatives in the future.

The new Conservative leader (Badenock or Jenrick at the time of writing) seems set to make this task easier by pitching primarily for Reform UK votes. This is unlikely to appeal to the Liberal Democrat voters and in some cases may even strengthen their resolve.

The British Election Study team asked respondents to imagine a different electoral system where you cast a vote *against* a party. For those who voted Liberal Democrat the Conservatives were the most likely party to vote against, but there are also high numbers who would vote against Reform. It is a glimmer of hope perhaps for Labour that LibDem voters in seats they did not win are especially likely to say they would vote *against* Reform - potentially important where Reform are now in second place behind Labour.

A strategy aimed at positioning the Conservatives closer to Reform seems like a gift to the Liberal Democrats, creating a space for them to oppose the government and delineate themselves from the Conservatives. But they will need to remember that a significant part of their success rests on a group of voters who may be very unforgiving of any perceived slights to their liberal-left agenda. It may be the LibDems turn to carry the electoral Ming vase, albeit with the Conservatives seeming keen to offer some bubble wrap in case of minor slips.