Labour leads among voters under 40, despite trailing massively overall – Yougov poll

26 Apr, 2017 12:42 / Updated 8 years ago

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour is the most popular party for younger British voters, with nearly half of all women under 40 and a third of men in the same age bracket coming out for the socialist, new polling suggests.

YouGov asked nearly 13,000 voters and found a significant generational split, with only around 29 percent of younger people intending to vote Conservative.

But the polls still give Prime Minister Theresa May’s party a 20 point advantage because the turnout among younger voters is traditionally substantially lower than for voters of older demographics. Electoral polls are measured after asking about ‘voting intention’ – which are those who are most likely to go to the polling station on June 8.

YouGov found 44 percent of Tory supporters were likely to vote, with 25 percent for Labour, and about 12 percent for the Liberal Democrats. The UK Independence Party had a mere nine percent of the vote and the Greens a further three percent.

The data was published on the same day that a leaked document revealed how Labour will focus on social care, education, and the National Health Service (NHS), rather than Brexit, immigration, and defense in the run up to the election of June 8.

The strategy came in a leaked memo sent to all of the party’s MPs on what their door-step message should be over the next few weeks.

“With Jeremy Corbyn, Labour will stand up for you,” the distributed ‘script’ reads.

“We will deliver a better, fairer Britain where prosperity is shared, everyone is rewarded fairly for hard work and where a home to rent or buy is affordable. We will build a Britain for the many not the few.”

Issues such as immigration and the rights of EU citizens in Britain are not broached in the document. Instead, Labour activists are encouraged to emphasize that the election “is not a rerun of the EU referendum.”

Corbyn promises instead to improve employment opportunities in the country, including a £10 ($12.8) per hour living wage, a guaranteed triple lock for pensions, and a national investment bank that would earmark £500 billion to fund capital investments and infrastructures.

The script also reveals that Labour “will always give the NHS the money it needs.”

A detailed manifesto launch is scheduled for May 15.