Education Groups by Party. British voting preferences organised by education, party affiliation, economic preferences and cultural preferences.

Ben Ansell’s piece on British voting preferences shows the emergence of ‘bloc politics’ and the demise of the median voter theorem. British politics now revolve around blocs where voters largely vote within their ideological blocs and evidence of this is the vote switching within the Labour and Conservative parties. Far more Labour voters are jumping ship to the Lib Dems and Greens, rather than joining the Reform Party. Whereas the Conservatives are losing their voter base to Reform, not the Lib Dems and Labour.

The second noteworthy thing about the article is the educational divide both within the left and the right (sidenote the labelling on the graph is a little wonky and economic preferences is plotted on the horizontal axis and cultural views on the vertical axis). People on the left generally hold the same economic views, but educational attainment changes their views on social issues. So a Labour voter who doesn’t have a GCSE (high school diploma) is more socially conservative than a GCSE holder, who in turn is more socially conservative than a person with an undergraduate degree, who in turn is more socially conservative than those with post-grad ones. This dynamic holds true for all the left-leaning parties and even the “don’t knows.”

The educational divide on the right is the complete polar opposite. Here right-leaning voters generally hold similar cultural values but education shapes their economic views. Meaning highly educated right-leaning voters will be more economically conservative than their low education peers.

This is relevant to the sub because it’s about British politics and giving one data point for an increasingly polarising world.

Also the full text to Ansell’s piece will be here: [https://benansell.substack.com/p/bloc-parties](https://benansell.substack.com/p/bloc-parties)

!ping UK&Fivey

One of these reactionary “Nick, 30” accounts who constantly bitches about high taxes and welfare was complaining about the UK rejoining the EU internal energy market, and it was pointed out that the average 30 year old voted Remain lol.