Readers of The Liberal Patriot will be familiar with the argument that the Democratic Party needs to reverse its decline with working-class Americans if it is to create durable governing coalitions—or even win at all, judging by the current state of the polls.
This argument has also been playing out in British politics over the past few years. The Labour Party, historically the party of the working class, was comprehensively defeated by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives at the last UK General Election in 2019. Labour’s fourth successive electoral defeat was all the more painful for the loss of what became known as the “Red Wall” seats, a phrase coined by Conservative pollster James Kanagasooriam to describe parliamentary constituencies who voted Conservative for the first time in their history.
But the reality is that Labour had been losing support amongst working-class voters for two decades, and until Keir Starmer became leader in 2020 it was insufficiently focused on winning over new and traditional working-class voters to the party. Starmer appears to be reversing that decline, according to research by the Progressive Policy Institute, which commissioned a comprehensive poll of working Americans and working-class Brits ahead of the double U.S. and UK elections in 2024. YouGov’s research for PPI shows that Starmer’s Labour are on course to win a majority of working-class voters once again—but Labour’s six point lead amongst this group is narrower than amongst the general population, with polls showing Labour at least 15 points ahead of the Conservatives amongst all voters.
