Analysis from over 10,000 Britons shows the Conservatives are trailing in every group except outright homeowners
Increasingly unaffordable house prices, rising mortgages and rent costs, a shortage of social housing, and housing benefit reductions could well mean that housing policies will be a key focus at the forthcoming general election. That being the case, new analysis of YouGov data reveals the electoral state of play among different housing tenure groups.
The results show that people who own their homes outright are relatively evenly split between the Conservatives (26%) and Labour (22%) in terms of their current vote intention. One in eleven (9%) are likely to vote Reform UK and 8% are say they will vote Liberal Democrat. A further 8% say they would not vote and 18% say they do not know.
However, people who have a mortgage on their homes lean significantly more towards Labour than those who do not have mortgages to pay on their homes. While 15% of this group tell us they will vote Conservative, more than twice as many (35%) say they will back Labour. One in ten of this group (10%) say they would not vote and 17% say they ‘don’t know’ who they would vote for.
People who rent their homes privately also lean heavily toward Labour, with 36% currently intending to vote for Keir Starmer’s party and only around 8% likely to vote Conservative. Those who rent their homes from housing associations or local authorities currently also break for Labour by 29% to 8% over the Conservatives.
Lastly the umbrella ‘other’ category, which is primarily comprised of people who live for free or pay rent to family and friends, are a mirror image in terms of their vote intention to those who rent their homes non-privately.
But why would outright homeowners be intending to vote so differently to everybody else? Firstly, this group tend to be older – a key Conservative voter demographic. Secondly, those who own their homes outright are also not impacted by recent soaring mortgage rates, and according to YouGov research from earlier this year are less likely to have been impacted by the cost of living crisis in general. Frustration with the government on these two grounds will therefore likely be much less among outright homeowners than other groups.
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