‘Workington Man’ won the election for Boris Johnson as eight out of ten older white men who back Leave voted for him
‘WORKINGTON Man’ was tonight credited for Boris Johnson’s General Election landslide as it emerges almost eight out of ten from the voting group backed him.
The key swing demographic for last Thursday’s nationwide poll was identified as older white men who back Leave, used to support Labour and live in smaller towns across the North and the Midlands.
Coining the phrase, the think tank Onward gave the group their name after the Cumbrian coastal town of Workington, which contained the largest proportion of them.
Onward has carried out in-depth analysis of last Thursday’s vote to find a jumbo 77 per cent of the group voted Tory.
In contrast, just 11 per cent voted Labour, and 93 per cent of it also thought Boris would make the best PM.
In 2015, just 42 per cent of 'Workington Man' backed the Tories, and the figure in 2017 was 62 per cent.
There are estimated to be almost 2.5 million voters who are over-45, white, male, without a university degree, and who backed Leave in the North and Midlands.
The mass defection of the former Labour voters allowed the PM to seize 50 seats from Jeremy Corbyn across the Midlands and the ‘Red Wall’ of the north.
'WORKINGTON MAN LENT VOTE'
Onward also found that the Tories are now indisputably the party of the working classes.
A total of 52 per cent of the C2 social class group – skilled manual workers – backed Boris, as well as 41 per cent of DE voters – semi-skilled, casual workers or the unemployed.
Meanwhile, just 32 per cent and 39 per cent respectively backed Labour, the biggest Tory lead among the groups in modern political history.
Writing in The Sun, Onward’s Director Will Tanner says: “The realignment witnessed last week was profound but it is not yet permanent.
“More than a fifth of voters engaged in contract voting, lending their support to a party other than the one which represents their values - and contract voting was strongest in Leave seats and former Labour strongholds that fell for the Conservatives.
“Workington Man lent his vote. To make him vote blue again, the Tories need to deliver.”
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Age was a crucial factor in discovering how many voted, with Onward finding that 45 was the crossover age above which most voted Tory and below backed Labour.
The downside for the Tories in the study is that the party lost a third - 33 per cent - of all Remainers who voted Conservative in 2015.
All but two of the Tories’ 48 seat gains came in Leave-voting areas, with Kensington and Stroud being the two exceptions.
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