The Conservatives and Reform UK are most likely to be seen as similar, but fewer than half think any two of the main parties are alike
Complaints about political parties being too similar are frequent, with the growing level of multi-partyism in British elections attributed to voters feeling that the traditional options just aren’t distinguishable.
Having asked the public to compare each of the five main UK parties, however, there is no party pair that a majority of people consider similar, even if some parties are undoubtedly perceived as closer than others.
The Conservatives and Reform UK are the most comparable in the public mind, with 45% of Britons feeling they are similar, including one in eight (12%) believing they are 'very' similar. Nonetheless, this is a roughly even divide as four in ten (39%) feel that the two right-wing parties are substantively different from each other.
Also splitting the public down the middle are Labour relative to the Lib Dems, and the Lib Dems compared against the Greens, with four in ten Britons (38-42%) feeling that both pairs are both similar and distinct from one another.
Despite it being a common political cliché, only a quarter of Britons (25%) feel that the Conservatives and Labour are similar to one another, with nearly two-thirds (64%) viewing the two as distinguishable.
The idea that Labour and the Greens are somewhat interchangeable is likewise held by only one in four Britons (26%), while only one in five (20%) feel the onetime coalition partners of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are kindred spirits.
Not viewed as similar at all are the Conservatives and the Greens, as well as Reform UK and all three major progressive parties. Only between 4-7% of Britons view these four matchups as similar, with more than three-quarters (76-78%) feeling they are different.
Voters disagree on how comparable the parties are, with Reform UK least likely to see their party as similar to others
However, not all groups of voters agree on how distinguishable the parties are.
With the top pairing of the Conservatives and Reform UK, two-thirds of Labour and Lib Dem voters (65-66%) view the two major right-wing parties as similar, but only 36% of Conservatives and just a quarter of Reform voters (27%) agree.
When it comes to the two main parties, there is a clear mainstream vs newcomer split. Just one in eight Labour voters (13%) and one in six Conservatives (18%) feel the big two are similar, compared to around four in ten Green and Reform UK voters (37-41%).
Sometimes there are even distinctions between the two parties in the pairing – half of Lib Dems (50%) believe their party is similar to the Greens, but less than three in ten Greens (28%) reciprocate, being the least likely voter group to feel the two parties are similar.
One particularly noticeable trend is Reform UK voters being the least likely to feel their party is similar to others, but usually the most likely to say that other parties are close together. This suggests that they tend to view Reform UK as a distinct entity away from a somewhat homogenous mainstream. Green voters exhibit a similar pattern, including being the most likely to view the Conservatives and Lib Dems as similar.
Perhaps most surprisingly is that only slightly more than four in ten Labour and Lib Dem voters (42-43%) perceive their two parties as being similar, in spite of the high level of similarity between their two voter bases and the willingness of voters to use them somewhat interchangeably.
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Photo: Getty
