Aftermath, Part 2 - Why Did All The Votes Go?

Predictable, there has been a lot of effort being put into saying the disaster of Friday the 13th is down to Corbyn, Corbynism and Corbynistas.

There was a poll published by Opinium the day after the election, asking why people did not vote labour, and why Labour voters who voted for other parties switched.

The survey found the main reasons people did not vote Labour were:

• The leadership (43%)
• Brexit (17%)
• Their economic policies (12%)

They also looked at the reasons given by party vote:

Further polling focused on those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019:

• The leadership (37%)
• Brexit (21%)
• Their economic policies (6%)

On the surface it looks pretty convincing.  Clearly, the Blairites were right.  The issue is and was Corbyn and his leadership team.

But ... but ... but ... but ...  I have some issues with this data.

First of all, 'Leadership' is a very vague category compared to 'Brexit' and 'Economic policy'; a lot comes under than heading so it isn't surprising it is the biggest category.  Does it mean the leadership was too leftwing?  Was it to do with the alleged failure to address anti-Semitism?  The inability to silence the criticism and attacks from within the party?  The disunity?  Because some of these aren't really criticiss of the leadership per se, but of the behaviour of the MPs and others who have been trying to throw Corbyn since he got into the saddle in 2015.

I'm also disappointed with the lack of geographic detail. I'd be very interested in seeing the result broken down by region - what if 'Brexit' was more of an issue in the Northern constituencies?  This was an election where what happened in the north was critical.  Traditional Labour heartlands revolted just two years after they had enthusiastically embraced Corbynism.  In 2015 Labour polled just under 18,000 votes in Blythe Valley; in 2017, that swelled to just under 24,000; but by 2019, the total was down to just under 17,000, and the seat was in Tory hands.  Those are remarkable changes in a couple of years.

The absence of the Brexit Party from the data breakdown by party is unforgivable. The BXP were critical in draining Labour support in a lot of constituencies, allowing the Tories to win on quite modest vote gains.  If we looked at that crucial demographic would we see Brexit significantly more prominent?  That seems to be the trend from the limited data available - where former Labour voters were more concerned about Brexit, and less so about 'leadership.'

I'd like to see more information about the reasons given for defection. Given the skewing we can see in the data we have, where almost a third of Lab / Con defectors identified Brexit 31% of the time as their reason for switching, I think it nothing much can be deduced without a more detailed picture. At the end, someone switching from Labour to Conservative is likely to be on the right wing of the party, so is likely to be opposed to the leadership anyway; we really need to know what went wrong in those northern seats and where the Brexit Party was decisive.

If we zoomed in on the Northern seats, and then in again on the Labour voters who went to BXP, would we see Labour voters switching to BXP because their old party had not embraced the referendum result?  And if we did the same again in other areas, would we see the Labou voters switching to the Lib Dems because Labour was not sufficiently Remain?