✅ Voting behaviour (gender)

Any tactics to reach men?

• There is little evidence for any specific tactic to reach male voters

Tactics to reach women?

• Over the years parties have tailored strategies to target female voters, e.g. Labour's 2017 pledge to conduct a gender-impact assessment on all policies + legislation

Is there a clear women’s vote? Why?

• Despite tactics, there is no clear women's vote as people tend to vote on issues other than gender, gender gap is usually quite small

• In the 1970s + early 80s, women were more likely to vote

• More likely to vote conservative than labour

Women’s voting since 1997

• Since 1997 women have become more likely than men to vote labour, although gaps are very small

Why women’s vote has changed since 1980s

• Changing role of women in society + changes in parties

What was the conservatives seen as the party of in 1970s-80s, why?

housewives', sought to keep prices low

what was labour seen as dominated by in the 1970s-80s?

• The industrial trade + so focused more on men's issues

what have women’s jobs included since the 80s

• more women have jobs, including labour-voting occupations

What did the collapse of the industrial base force labour to do?

forced labour of 1990 to consider more issues relating to women than before

Issues prioritised by men:

foreign intervention, nuclear power + weapons

Issues prioritised by women:

health + education

How men + women voted 2024

• Voted very similarly:

• 34% M + 35% F backing labour

• 12%M + 13% F Lib Dem

• Few more men than women w conservatives: 26%M + 23% F

• More men that women voted reform: 17%M + 12% F

How young people (18-24) voted 2024:

• More women voted greens 23%F + 12%

• More men voted reform + conservative 12%M + 6%F reform + 10%M + 6%F conservative

Reform performance on a whole:

• Doing better with men than women across the board