Roosmarijn de Geus, PhD

6 September 2024.

With the U.S. election in full swing, the U.K. general election of July 4th can start to feel like a distant memory. Yet, now the dust is settling on Labour’s victory the fun process of post-election analysis can start (fun for political scientists at least). 

Although historically women in the U.K. have been more likely to support the Conservative Party (the ‘’traditional gender gap’’) – the 2017 and 2019 general elections both saw a ‘’modern gender gap’’ whereby more women than men supported the Labour Party (see Campbell and Shorrocks 2021). With discussions on gender gaps elsewhere, and an increasing focus on the gender-divided support among young voters, the assumption before the election was that Labour would again do well in attracting female voters. Although an in-depth analysis of pre-election polls by Sanders and Fowler (2024) showed that the gender gap for the Labour Party might be significantly smaller compared to previous elections. As also pointed out elsewhere gender gaps vary across elections depending on policy supply (Shorrocks 2022), party leadership (de Geus and Ralph-Morrow 2020), issue salience (Campbell 2024) and the general party landscape.

What explains modern gender gaps 

Before diving into the analysis of the 2024 election, it’s interesting to reflect briefly on why women are thought to be more supportive of left-leaning or progressive parties [or: why men are more likely to support the opposite]. As mentioned, until 2017 the UK was somewhat of an outlier – whereas in many other western democracies women have long been key supporters of the left, in the UK it wasn’t until 2017 that women became a core support pillar of the Labour Party. The historic alliance between women and the Conservative Party was partially based on higher levels of religiosity among (older) women (Shorrocks 2018); whereas the general shift to the Labour Party has been driven by mostly younger women responding to austerity measures (Sanders & Shorrocks 2019); as well as underlying gender differences in Brexit preferences (Fowler 2022).

In terms of gendered levels of support for smaller parties, research on radical right or right extremist parties has long documented their higher levels of favorability among men. Explanations for this phenomenon abound, ranging from differences in exposure to immigration, differences in issue attitudes or liberal-authoritarian values, occupational stratification, and in the case of the UK, different levels of support for UKIP’s longstanding leader Nigel Farage (de Geus and Ralph-Morrow 2020 – also gives an overview of general explanations).

UK General Election Gender Gap 2024

Using data released by YouGov four days after the election allows us to see to what extent pre-existing patterns of gender and party support persisted in 2024. First, the YouGov post-election data shows no overall gender gap in Labour support, rather the party did equally well among women (35%) and men (34%). Yet – perhaps surprisingly, a gender gap is observed for the Conservative Party: 26% of women supported Sunak’s party compared to 23% of men. There is further a small gender gap in Green Party support (8% of women vs. 6% of men supported the party) and a larger gender gap in support for the radical right Reform UK: 17% of men vs. 12% of women supported the party.

How to interpret these headline findings? Were women more favourable to the Conservative Party than men? The answer is likely yes and no. First, as discussed above – the party landscape is important when explaining or analysing gender gaps. In this case, we see that part of this Conservative gender gap may be explained by the relative success of Reform UK (winning 14% of votes), which was more popular among men than women. As such, part of the gender gap in Conservative Party vote likely reflects the fact that male voters on the right end of the ideological spectrum were more comfortable switching to Reform UK compared to female voters on the right end of the spectrum. 

A second interpretation however requires us to dig a bit deeper and look at gender gaps across different age groups. 

Gender-Age Gaps 

Luckily the YouGov data breaks down gender and age distributions which allows us to gain a further understanding of differences within and across gender groups. Three things stand out:

1. Whereas in previous elections young women strongly swung toward the Labour Party, we see no such difference now. Labour attracted a similar proportion of young (18-24 yr old) men (40%) and women (42%). Rather we see this gender gap among young voters has now shifted to the Green Party which was supported by 23% of young women vs. only 12% of young men.
   
2. The positive gender gap among women for the Conservative Party is mostly explained by older women (50-64) who swung Conservative by 29% compared to 23% of their male counterparts. Although it’s noteworthy the eldest group (65+) showed no gender gap in Conservative Party support.
    

3. The gender gap in support for Reform UK is consistent across age groups, ranging between 5-6%. The strongest supporters here are middle aged men (22%), whereas only 12% of young men support the party. In line with expectation, the party is least popular among young women (6%). 

Conclusions

If there is one thing the above discussion might show us it’s that gender divisions in political party support are complex. They go beyond the simple ‘’women – left / men – right’’ divisions we sometimes see emerging in the media (or the pub). Gender gaps vary across elections and the party landscape, issue positions and parties’ electoral chances all factor into them. 

The fact that the Labour Party performed equally well across all age and gender groups suggests that the party’s message had a broad appeal across the electorate. The Green Party’s success in attracting young female voters in particular likely reflects the fact that the Labour Party took a more centrist approach when compared to 2017 and 2019. As more data becomes available (such as the British Election Study pre- and post-survey) – we can uncover more precisely which issues drew young women to the Green party.

Although there is a gender gap in support for the Conservative Party on average, it seems premature to suggest this is a return to the ‘’traditional gender gap’’. Rather, the accompanying gender gap in support for Reform UK suggests differences in preferences within the centre-right ideological spectrum among men and women. These gendered differences in UK Reform support are remarkably consistent across age groups. Here too it will be interesting to get more data on issue preferences, perceptions of ideological placement and leadership evaluations to untangle the gendered differences in support for the Conservative Party versus Reform UK.

One implication of the gender gaps discussed is that there are important differences within gender groups. For instance, 23% of young women opted for the Green Party compared to only 3% of women who are over 65. Yet, 16% of women aged 49-65 voted for Reform UK which is similar to the share of young men (12%) who voted for this party. The YouGov Data unfortunately did not provide breakdowns for gender and race, but we may imagine differential patterns across racial groups also. A headline focus on differences across genders can obscure important differences within gender groups.