Could religious minority voters determine the outcome of the General Election?
In the last few months leaders among different faith groups have been issuing electoral advice for their followers. The letters from the Anglican and Catholic bishops received much media coverage. But various minority faith organizations have also made interventions. Sikh organizations, for example, have published a manifesto calling for candidates to support a number of policies, including support for publicly-funded Sikh ethos schools, and for government recognition of the events of 1984 in India as “Sikh Genocide”. The Muslim Council of Britain has also published a similar document which sets out the most important issues for British Muslims today, noting that there are 26 constituencies where the Muslim population is at 20% or more, and so could significantly shape outcomes.
How have members of religious minority groups voted in past elections?
The chart shows how participants in the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study said they voted in 2005 and 2010. The study allows us to differentiate between groups within broader religious categories, such as between Sunni and ‘other’ Muslims (including Shi’a), and between Catholic and Pentecostal ethnic minorities. Other groups are not included here due to small sample sizes.
We can see that ethnic and religious minorities overall have tended to vote overwhelmingly for Labour. But there are differences in party support levels between different groups.
In the 2005 election Labour’s vote share was around 80% or higher for each group with the exception of Hindus, who were most likely out of all the groups to vote Conservative (at 26%).
In 2010 Labour continued to dominate, securing 60-80% of votes in almost all groups. But within each category support for the party was less than in the previous election, with the Tories and Liberal Democrats making gains.
For example, Hindu support for the Tories rose from 26% in 2005 to 36% in 2010. Sikh support rose from 10 to 20%, and Sunni Muslim support increased from 6 to 14%.
In both elections, support for the Liberal Democrats was low across the board, but as with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems gained more votes among each group in 2010 compared to the previous election. For example, Lib Dem support among Sunnis rose from 12 to 18%, and among ‘other’ Muslims from 11 to 16%.
In the coming election, it remains to be seen whether Labour will win the bulk of votes from the religious minorities surveyed here. With these groups increasingly willing to scrutinize candidates’ positions on a range of issues, neither Labour nor the other parties should take the historical Labour-minority association for granted.
(N.B. The data recorded for voting in the 2005 election are based on a recall question in the 2010 EMBES survey).
This snippet is taken from our report Voting and Values in Britain: Does religion count? (pp. 40-41).
See the full report here and an Executive Summary here for further analysis of voting behaviour and religious identity.
Data source: EMBES 2010
