I saw an interesting piece of polling the other day, posted by Mike Smithson of politicalbetting.com (Mr Thorn does not endorse gambling). In this he posted the stark gap in voting intention based on educational attainment, with a huge Conservative lead amongst those with no/low educational qualifications and a huge Labour lead amongst those with degree level qualifications or higher. You can find the original article here.
There are lots of interesting theories about why this might be. Most obviously, this could be about recent political events. Voters without qualifications were disproportionately more likely to support Brexit, and are also far more likely to favour Conservative policies on immigration and crime. There may be a link between the experience of attending university and more social democratic policies, relating to immigration, Europe, crime and other issues. Traditionally, this would have been unlikely to be the case, with voters from working class backgrounds previously being those least likely to gain higher-level academic qualifications, and also being far more likely to vote Labour, so this is a clear example of dealignment.
Another (linked) interesting thing I saw this week was a map demonstrating the oldest and youngest constituencies in the country (below). It is a further reminder that not only are the preferences and voting patterns of older and younger voters different, but that this does not simply play out in turnout. Namely, there are some seats that are specifically dominated by younger voters and some (a lot more) dominated by older voters. As you can see, the younger seats tend to be in bigger towns and cities, and older towns are often in coastal areas. These also closely correlate with support for Brexit and Conservative/Labour voting patterns.
https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1505828056312676352
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