There is a diversity of political opinion, social values and economic preferences not just between Britain’s white and non-white population, but between different ethnic and religious groups, a new report into the general election voting patterns in the UK revealed this week.
Respondents to a nationwide survey and analysis by UK In a Changing Europe think tank and Focaldata found British Indians and British Hindus were the ethnic minority sub-groups most likely to have voted Conservative in 2019, a pattern repeated in 2024. It cautioned that at future elections, Labour cannot rely on “ethnic minority voters as a ‘bloc’ of support”.
Voters of Chinese, Indian and Caribbean heritage were found to be particularly focused on government competence, with these groups also more likely than other ethnic groups to say politicians should be strong and effective, as opposed to intellectual or fair.
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The ‘Minorities Report’ found: “There is also a particular interaction with religion among British Indian voters. Though Labour won more support across all ethnic minority religious groups than the Conservatives in 2019, their lead was smallest among Indian Hindus, at just 3 per cent. This was a group where Labour did less well in comparison to other religious groups in 2024.
“Indian Sikhs, however, were much less likely to vote Conservative in 2019, with one of the strongest levels of support for Labour of any religious group.”
On the issue of economic and social values, British Indian voters hold quite right-wing economic views in comparison to other ethnic minority voters. These views seem to have influenced the vote choice of these groups, specifically in the 2019 general election.
“Some ethnic minority groups hold more right-wing economic views than others, in particular British Chinese and Indians, specifically Indian Hindus. These were the groups that were most likely to say they voted Conservative in 2019, suggesting economic values do impact the vote choice of ethnic minority voters,” the analysis based on an online survey revealed.
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Among its conclusions on voting patterns, the report found that there are a clutch of issues such as immigration and multiculturalism where ethnic minorities are much more positive than the rest of Britain. It is true that the Labour Party still convinces a far greater proportion of minorities with so-called “warm: views of the party to vote for it than the Conservative Party does. But among many ethnic groups, there is a fundamental disjunction between opinion on the salient issues of the day and voting patterns. On the whole, the report finds the UK at an “inflection point” in terms of how ethnic minorities vote.
It concludes: “The fall of a clutch of Labour seats with large Muslim populations to Independents (and to the Conservatives in Leicester East) was not on anyone’s election bingo card. Ethnic minority opinion now spans the entire political spectrum.
“The political, social and economic values of British Indians and British Chinese voters, and to a lesser degree Black African voters, are structurally different from other minority groups – in particular British Caribbeans and British Muslims. These differences are not yet fully expressed in terms of voting behaviour (particularly due to the Conservatives’ staggeringly bad defeat in 2024, where proportional swing hid large changes in voting behaviour), but will be in time as the former camp drifts rightward, and the latter to the left.”