Thankfully for those of us who enjoy election data analysis, Lord Ashcroft conducted a huge telephone poll that is very similar to an exit poll, and thus we can examine the voting behavior of various groups of people. I'd like to note two unrelated things.
1) I don't have any real affinity for a British party. There are things I like and dislike about all parties. Hopefully that makes me more sober in my analysis but I have political views just like anyone else and they may influence the opinion part of this post
2) The national polls weren't really off in this election. They had a small error, but that's very common in pretty much every election on Earth. It was similar in magnitude to 2012 in the United States, a year that we don't consider a polling fail, but rather a small misfire.
So, without further ado, the most complex chart of them all.
Party colors are as follows:
Labour = Red, Tories = Blue, Liberal Democrats = Yellow, UKIP = Purple, Greens = Green, Scottish National Party = Orange
Here's a key, because I understand this is one complicated pie chart. This is a chart of (nearly) all British voters, grouped by how they voted in the last two elections. Solid colors means they stuck with the same party both times. If they switched, the dominant color is their new party, while the less prominent color is their party from 2010. So what can we see? About two-thirds of British voters remained loyal to their party from the previous election. The LibDems saw significant defections everywhere (including UKIP, proving once again that some people just vote for protest parties regardless of ideology), and the Tories saw significant defections to UKIP. Those are both things everyone knew before the election. The first other interesting fact I can find is that most new Green voters came from the LibDems. Maybe Brits reading this will think that is obvious, but for we Americans it's surprising that the centrist party supplied more voters to the furthest-left one than the center-left party. The second interesting "new" fact is that 4.5% of voters switched between the two major parties, and they were split about evenly in the direction they moved.
It is my opinion after seeing some of these results that analysts were foolish to think Miliband really could have toppled Cameron. Even though the UK has a parliamentary system, the party leader matters. In the Ashcroft poll, Cameron beats Miliband in a head-to-head 50-33. That is absolutely atrocious; The Super-Huggable Ted Cruz wouldn't even get destroyed by that margin. In fact, such a total is in line with blowout elections in the US like 1984, 1972, and 1964. And in my opinion Ed Miliband was just as bad of a candidate as George McGovern or Barry Goldwater. I can't say I was smart enough to note all of this in advance, though.
The real killer in terms of head-to-heads comes within the major parties. The Tories choose Cameron 97-1. Labour? Miliband wins easily, but only 79-7. 21% of his own party is uncomfortable with the idea of him as prime minister. Again, those kinds of defections are in line with landslide losses, not squeakers. If you're wondering about the minor parties, they show the following: UKIP Cameron 56-13, LibDems Cameron 52-21, SNP Miliband 39-16, Greens Miliband 47-19. Note also how poorly Miliband does with LibDem voters.
Actually I lied. There are two more killers, and they're not about Miliband per se but give more evidence why a Cameron win should have been more expected. The first is in this chart:
46% of British voters want more austerity. Yes, almost a majority want tax increases and spending cuts. Only 24% (including just 40% of Labour and bare majorities of the Greens and SNP) say austerity was bad. Keynesian economics has lost in the UK for the time being. People liked what Cameron was doing with the budget. Why throw him out?
The second reason Cameron was going to win, and again I'm not tooting my horn as much as trying to learn for future prognostication, was that the economy wasn't voters' #1 issue. There are generally four reasons an incumbent can lose: the economy, unpopular war, corruption, or incompetency. The latter three were not issues in this campaign. What was the most important issue, according to voters? The National Health Service, traditionally a Labour base issue. But the only reason the NHS could be number one is that people no longer were as worried about the economy, and that points to a win for the incumbent.
Finally, let's look at the election demographically. Not racially (the UK's electorate is only 6% non-White), but by age, class, and education level.
The UK exhibits remarkable generational polarization, larger than America's. In 2012, Obama won by about 20 with voters 18-34 and lost 65+ by 12. That's a 32% marginal difference. In the UK, the left won young voters by 22, nearly identical to the US. But they managed to lose seniors by a 2:1 margin! I'm not sure how Labour pulled off losing 46-22 to the Tories with people 65+, but they did it. It's very tough to win that way.
Class in the UK is measured a bit differently than the US. People are ranked A through E, which more or less corresponds with how we think of class in the US (upper/upper middle/middle/lower middle/lower), but it's more formal there. Here are the charts:
A few things are apparent, none too surprising. Labour and UKIP do better with the lower class, and the Tories and LibDems are the opposite. Overall the right won with classes A and B by 12, win with class C by 6, and lost classes D and E by 10.
And finally, here is education:
In the US, Obama won the highest education levels by 13, lost college graduates by 4, and won people with no degree by 3. The UK is a different story. The left did well among the higher education levels, winning by 8. They lost college graduates by 6. So far, that would point to a 50-50 election. But the left got slaughtered with high school graduates, losing by 18. These people should be voting for Labour, especially given how much less important religion is in British politics. Part of the problem is UKIP, which took 18%, but even then Labour lost to the Tories 33-30 here.
The Path Forward for Labour?
Labour stands at a crossroads, and in many ways I think it's similar to the crossroads the Republican Party faces here. They have three choices:
1) Move to the center on social issues, particularly immigration. Losses to UKIP are hurting the party; if Labour had not lost a single voter to UKIP (yes, I realize that likely means some voters on their other flank would have abandoned them, but it's a thought exercise) they would have been boosted by 2%, and that's not including Tory voters who might have switched if not for immigration. Britain is far too White for immigration issues to be a net positive for Labour like it is for Democrats in the United States.
2) Move to the center on economic issues, embracing Blairism. For whatever reason, Miliband wasn't trusted. Part of it may be that his economic platform was too far left for Britain. Only 24% of British voters think austerity was wrong. The deficit ranks higher than the cost of living on the list of important issues. The AB social class is Labour's worst demographic despite Labour's progressive stances on social issues.
3) Labour isn't the problem, their candidate was. This was essentially Republicans' view after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012. Romney was a weak candidate, possibly the Republicans' worst since Goldwater. Try again in 2016 with a better candidate and win. Labour can imagine the same thing. Miliband was in many ways a left-wing Romney, and perhaps with a new leader who combines Blair's likability with Miliband's policies, they can win in 2020.
I'm not sure which path is right. I think it's an interesting thought exercise.