General election 2015: why is Labour dominating polls in London?
Changing demographics of UK capital mean the city is on course to be as dominated by Ed Miliband’s party as Scotland is by the SNP
If Ed Miliband wins the election in two weeks’ time, a big part of Labour’s victory will be explained by its strength in London.
According to recent polling by ICM and YouGov, Miliband’s party enjoys a double-digit lead over the Tories in the capital. Labour is on 42% and 45% with the two pollsters, while the Tories are on 32% and 34%.
To put that in perspective, Labour is almost as well supported in London as the SNP is in Scotland (Nicola Sturgeon’s party is averaging 47%), and the party is nearing the levels of support that it enjoyed under Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 when Labour amassed close to half the capital’s vote. The figures are sure to cheer the party amid huge expected losses in Scotland.
Labour’s renaissance in London is by no means inevitable
In the 2005 election, the party saw its share of the vote fall by 8.4 percentage points to 38.9% in the wake of the Iraq war. In comparison, Labour dropped by 5.5 percentage points nationally.
However, the Conservatives – the largest party in the capital in the 1980s until a 14 point collapse in their vote in 1997 – were never quite able to capitalise on this and remained stuck on around 31% until 2005.
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