A new voting intention poll has shown that Labour is faring best among the most financially well-off. Conversely, the Greens rank dead last for the same demographic. If that doesn’t say something interesting about each party’s perceived priorities, we don’t know what does!
We’re once again in the run-up to the local and mayoral elections in England, along with the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru elections in Scotland and Wales respectively.
Because of the deeply broken nature of our media-political system, this inevitably means that we’re also seeing wild speculation about the hypothetical 2029 General Election as well.
The Canaryis paradoxically both resistant to that system and a product of it — so let’s get to speculating! On 26 April, Stats for Leftiestweeted a fascinating projection of voting intention according to financial stability:
POLL | Voting intention amongst …
– Richest –
Lab: 25%
Ref: 21%
Con: 18%
Lib: 18%
Grn: 16%
– Poorest –
Poll: @IpsosUK, 9-15 April 2026 pic.twitter.com/SPoiAnsOB5
— Stats for Lefties
(@LeftieStats) April 26, 2026
Caveats, damned caveats and statistics
As always with any with any political polling, there’s a pinch of salt to come.
In this case, Stats for Lefties drew her figures from Ipsos — a global leader in market research. This is significant because the firm doesn’t use a respondent’s income or other objective measures to determine their financial situation. Rather, as Ipsos explained that:
We’ve identified five financial conditions based on people’s self-reported financial situation and concerns about their finances.
People can move in and out of these conditions as their financial situation and/or their outlook change.
The study defines ‘Comfortably Off’ as people who are:
Living comfortably on their household’s income nowadays and are not very or not at all worried about their household’s financial situation.
Conversely, ‘Financially Precarious’ includes people who are:
Finding it difficult on their household income nowadays, and are very or fairly worried about their household’s financial situation.
Notably, Ipsos also includes ‘Financially Stable’ and ‘Just About Coping’ between these two extremes. Stats for Lefties omitted these results from her tables. There’s also a financial level below ‘Financially Precarious’, i.e. ‘Extremely Vulnerable’. However, both Ipsos and Stats for Lefties roll the two poorest groups in together.
Labour, party of the comfortable
Now, there are some very good reasons to use this self-reporting design for financial perceptions. For instance, an individual’s income will stretch further if they have a working partner and no dependents. However, asking questions about these variables would add a great deal more working-out to the results.
As such, we just need to bear in mind that these stats are based on self-perception. That being said, there’s several very noteworthy points to make here.
First and foremost, there’s the fact that Labour are doing best amongst the most well-off:
Starmer’s “Labour” scores only 10% with the poorest voters and 25% with the richest – the largest share of richest voters of any party.
Labour is dead and needs to be buried. https://t.co/NuRwHVwgb6— Mark Simpson (@marksimpsonist) April 26, 2026
25% of the well-off would vote Labour, closely followed by 21% for Reform. This is quite unsurprising, given that the rich tend to know who’s buttering their bread.
The Labour Party took a distinctly ‘pro-business’ turn under Keir Starmer’s leadership, putting out policies directly shaped by corporate lobbyists. It even took more of its funding from big businesses rather than trade unions for the first time in its history.
Not, of course, that sucking up to the fat cats did the party much good in the long term.
Of course, Labour’s unlikely to change its rhetoric even now:
And you’ll *still* get Labour types doing the ‘middle-class metropolitan Greens’ shtick https://t.co/5WjJgPQbNt
— Daniel Gerke (@drgerke1) April 26, 2026
‘Extraordinary inversion’
Meanwhile, Reform have always been deep in the pockets of big business. Farage has also been acting like a crypto lobbyist and fanatic in recent months — though his belief that unregulated internet money is the right direction for the UK has been more muted since the crypto crackdown on donations for political parties.
Reform are also leading among the most financially precarious demographics. 29% of the least-well-off among us stated an intention to vote for the far-right party. Interestingly, Reform’s support actually dips lowest among middle-earners, with just 18% of the ‘Financially Stable’ intending to vote for the reactionary nationalists.
Given their nature as a party of big business, that support from the poorest demographics is somewhat confusing:
I still don’t understand why the poorest are supporting a political party that wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest people? https://t.co/6Do0HzhqVf
— Mel
(@meljomur) April 26, 2026
Of course, it’s also true that economic hardship makes people desperate — the very desperation the far-right preys upon.
Now for the Greens
Meanwhile, support for the left-wing Greens has hit 19% among the least-well-off. This is almost double Labour’s rock-bottom 10%:
Extraordinary inversion of Labour’s traditional position – and the Greens now clearly making headway among working class voters. https://t.co/9p77wUZwam
— Richard Sanders (@PulaRJS) April 26, 2026
It’s also notable that the Green Party’s voter base varies comparatively little according to class:
The Green Party have one of the most balanced bases in the country from a class perspective. https://t.co/TUJJj8aEXD
— thelefttake (@thelefttake) April 26, 2026
Among the wealthiest, support for the Greens sits at 17%. It dips to 14% among the financially stable, and rises to 19% for the coping, precarious and vulnerable. Notably, that’s a similar support curve to that of Reform, though rather less pronounced.
If we were feeling particularly glib, we’d make a point here about some deep similarity between the two parties — but that would make us look deeply unserious now, wouldn’t it?
Featured image via the Canary
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