An analysis at the weekend by the politics professor Matthew Goodwin should strike dread into the heart of the Conservative Party. This month’s local elections, he wrote, confirmed that the Labour Party has been advancing most strongly in areas filled with university graduates, who now represent one quarter of the country.
In 2019, Labour gained a 35-point lead among 18 to 34-year-old graduates. Only one in five of them voted Tory. Nearly 80 per cent of young graduates plan to vote for liberal or left-wing parties which mirror their strongly liberal outlook on issues such as climate change, immigration, gender and sexual identities and Black Lives Matter.
The most important electoral divide today, he suggested, is not the result of wealth, class or income. It’s been caused by the expansion of higher education.
Over the past four decades, the number of students obtaining a degree each year has rocketed from 68,000 to nearly half a million. Going to university has consistently been shown to make students more liberal and left-wing, especially those who study social science subjects. More graduates, wrote Goodwin, equals more Labour voters.
