Fragmented and Dealigned: The 2024 British General Election and the Rise of Place-Based Politics

Abstract

While the outcome of the 2024 British general election signalled a resounding repudiation of the incumbent government—returning a 231-seat swing from the Conservatives to Labour—it did not radically overturn the geography of electoral outcomes in England and Wales. Indeed, demographic predictors of party vote for parliamentary constituencies at the aggregate level mostly represented a continuation of recent trends. With the Conservative Party's vote collapsing most in areas where it started highest—and where the Leave vote had been highest in 2016—Labour secured shock victories in relatively affluent parts of southern England as well as retaking all the ‘red wall’ constituencies in northern England that it lost in 2019, despite its national vote share only increasing slightly. This represented the other end of the ‘realignment’ observed in 2019: as the electoral tide went out on the Conservatives, the relative weakening of their support in areas with graduates, middle class professionals and mortgage holders came home to roost. The election exposed a fragmented and marginal map, bequeathing a fragile electoral future, despite the Starmer government's large parliamentary majority.