THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION

8. The new floating voters
Why the ethnic minority vote is increasingly up for grabs
The ethnic minority vote has moved from the margins into the
mainstream of British General Elections. With around one in ten votes
being cast by non-white Britons, any party that wants to win an election
needs to win votes from voters of every ethnic background.
As most British voters became less partisan over the last few
decades, ethnic minority voters stood out as retaining considerably higher
levels of partisan identity and allegiance, particularly to the Labour party,
than their fellow citizens. In 2010, Conservative strategists noted that ‘the
number one driver of not voting Conservative is not being white”.
The Conservatives won only around one in six ethnic minority votes
in 2010 and this ‘ethnic gap’ hit their prospects in enough marginal seats
to prevent the party winning an overall majority. The party found that it
struggled to win upwardly mobile ethnic minority voters who had a similar
socio-economic background to other Conservative voters, or those whose
views of key issues, such as tax, spending and the economy, or social issues
such as the role of the family, were closer to the right than the left.
As the ethnic minority vote continues to grow, one of the big
questions in British electoral politics is how far ethnicity will remain a
significant driver of political choice – or whether ethnic minority voting
might begin to converge with broader voting patterns, splitting more evenly
between the parties, based on socio-economic factors or views of the major
issues of the day. There is now growing evidence that a large and growing
number of ethnic minority voters can also be seen as ‘floating voters’ whose
votes are up for grabs between parties and candidates.
How quickly this develops will depend both on social changes
– including economic opportunity, integration and identity in British
society – and also on the political choices that party leaders and candidates
make in seeking to win support from Britons of every ethnic background.
Striking the right balances to find the common ground on immigration and
integration will be important to achieving that. Research shows that ethnic
minority voters are more positive about the contribution of immigration
to Britain – and that they will be repelled by arguments that present
immigration as an existential, cultural threat to British identity. But ethnic
minority Britons don’t want politicians to keep quiet about immigration
out of fear of stirring up a controversial issue: rather there is an appetite to
hear politicians talk more about constructive ways to manage the pressures
of immigration and to secure its benefits to Britain.
Ethnic minority voting in the 2015 General Election
The Survation/British Future poll, the first full survey of ethnic
minority voting since the general election, suggests that the Conservatives
achieved their strongest ever performance with ethnic minority voters in
2015.
36 British Future / The Politics of Immigration