As predicted, the Labour Party has swept to power in the UK General Election and formed a new Government with the lion’s share of MPs elected. However, it was largely predicated on the outright collapse of the previous incumbents, the Conservative Party – and the Labour vote share would have been higher without the astonishing recovery of the Liberal Democrats, not to mention encroachment from the left by the Greens, and from the right by Reform UK. In spite of the UK’s stubborn adherence to the archaic First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system, any seats going to these parties is representative of the fragmented political landscape in this country, and the less than fervent appetite voters have for Sir Kier Starmer’s party and government.
Did the goth electors of the UK also have a more fractious political appetite, or were they less indicative of national trends? How did this election’s polling differ to previous returns? Let’s dig into it!
Firstly, let’s review turnout. My polling base – you, the generous reader! – has been steadily decreasing at each poll. Just 105 votes for the 2024 Election, versus 152 in 2019, 199 in 2017 and an unmatched 247 ahead of the 2015 General Election. It could be political malaise, or just a decline in visitors to my site – but either way, engagement with politics has been falling off. Turnout at the 2024 General Election itself was at one of its lowest points ever, which I feel we’ve accurately reflected.
Let’s turn then to the poll itself, and the shares for each party. It’s interesting to note that Labour does indeed command a majority again, but in parallel to the Election, it’s reduced from the overwhelming 80% share they attracted in 2019. At the last election, all competition was obliterated, whereas 2024’s results were far more fragmented.
There was a very strong showing for the Green Party in the goth poll, and reflects their improved performance in the General Election with four seats for Green MPs. Equally novel in Parliamentary history was five seats for Reform UK – so interestingly, every voter in my poll would be represented by a Member of Parliament! Despite criticisms of FPTP, I’m not sure any political system would survive a move to representation of that degree!
Interestingly, it is more reflective of my inaugural poll in 2015 when the Greens stormed to a resounding majority of 45% of the total vote. The performance of Reform UK predecessors however has been more variable, with UKIP / Brexit / BNP / Change parties for example hovering between a minor and no show in previous polls, whilst in British political history they’ve maintained a constant presence on the fringes of voter appeal, and finally rushed to prominence with the third-highest vote share in the country.
Both the General Election and my poll prove conclusively that the voters of the UK rejected 14 years of Tory rule, with the implosion of Rishi Sunak’s government the true fodder for Labour’s rise as well as the proliferation of smaller parties. Yet the Velvet Vote went truly left in a rejection of the right-wing rhetoric espoused by Nigel Farage’s party, rallying significantly under the banners of the Greens and Liberal Democrats. Not only is this a significant deviation from the national norms, but lends weight to the widely-held but largely unsubstantiated theory that the goth subculture in the UK trends left. I look forward to professional sociological analysis of this!
I’d like to thank every visitor who participated in the poll and helped us all get a good look at how this vague counterculture tribe thinks and feels about politics. It’s one of the core reasons I run the blog! The other is, of course, the music and I’ll be at Leodis Requiem next weekend – hopefully I’ll see some of you there and we can escape the horrors of modern politics together!
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