How to get more women to vote (for Labour)?
The question has underpinned Harriet Harman’s recent campaigning strategies. The Labour Deputy Leader has faced both criticism and applause for her plan to publish a ‘Women’s Manifesto’ focusing on issues like childcare and equal pay, and for her launch of a bright pink minibus which has been bringing female MPs into contact with female voters.
Harman has been responding to research which shows an increasing gender gap in electoral turnout. In 2010 more than 9 million women failed to vote compared to 8 million men. In addition, Ed Miliband does not score favourably among women voters in comparison to David Cameron. A poll in October 2014 asked which man has what it takes to be a good prime minister; 31% of women named Cameron, and only 12% Miliband.
When religious affiliation is taken into account, there are slight differences within each group in how men and women vote. As the graph shows, for some groups this was small. Among Anglicans, women were slightly more likely than men to vote for the Tories in 2010 – 47% compared to 43%. This followed the national trend – as we can see, overall women were slightly more likely to vote for the Tories than men.
However, there was a larger gender gap among Catholics, with Catholic women being less inclined to Labour than Catholic men. The proportions of Tory-Labour support among Catholic women were 33% and 37% respectively, compared to 25% and 43% among Catholic men.
But within other groups, this trend was reversed.
Nonconformist women were slightly less likely to vote for the Conservatives than men. They were much more likely to vote for Labour (30%) than Nonconformist men (16%), who were more likely to vote for the Tories or the Lib Dems.
Among Presbyterians in Scotland, women were less likely than men to vote for either the Conservatives or Labour, and more likely than men to vote for the Liberal Democrats or ‘other’ parties (most likely the SNP).
But among those of no religious affiliation, and those of non-Christian faiths, there was no significant gender divide in voting behaviour.
(N.B. A very small proportion of the sample (3%) was classed as ‘other’ based on the question on religious affiliation, and they are not included in the analysis here).
This snippet is taken from our report Voting and Values in Britain: Does religion count? (pp. 48-49).
See the full report here and an Executive Summary here for further analysis of voting behaviour and religious identity.
Data source: BES CIPS 2010. The survey consisted of 13,356 respondents. Weighted data
Individual traditions within the 'Nonconformist' and 'Non-Christian religion' categories are grouped together due to small sample sizes.
