The educational divide between graduate voters and the rest of the UK could ¡°kill off¡± the Conservative Party, according to a leading political scientist ¨C but could also cause issues for Labour.

Historically the party of working-class voters, the Labour Party has increasingly become the home of those who attended university, especially since the country voted to leave the European Union in 2016.

Graduates have tended to identify as ¡°Remainers¡±, more socially liberal and most concerned about the environment, according to Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester. In contrast, school leavers have increasingly identified as ¡°Brexiteers¡±, are concerned about immigration and are more supportive of harsher sentences for criminals.

Speaking at a webinar hosted by the Centre for 51³Ô¹Ï Higher Education, he added: ¡°There¡¯s a cluster of values and a cluster of issues that show very strong education divides, and those have become mobilised into political behaviour with Brexit accelerating that process.¡±

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With many graduates tending to group together in a relatively smaller number of electoral seats, this shift in support was enormously beneficial for the Conservatives in first-past-the-post election victories in 2017 and 2019, said Ford.?

¡°During these two elections, [Labour] ended up with far fewer seats overall¡­because the Conservatives were advancing in seats where there were very few graduates and there are a lot more of those seats.¡±

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¡°°Õ³ó¾±²õ was essentially Labour¡¯s electorate becoming less electorally efficient and the Conservative electorate becoming more electorally efficient.¡±

However, this ended up causing the Tories problems in the 2024 election. Ford said the Liberal Democrat Party was able to capitalise on the Tory party¡¯s shift to the right to align themselves with university graduates in the south of England ¨C becoming a ¡°regional graduate party¡± last year.

Ford said, meanwhile, that a re-emergence of the education divide?meant the Tories lost votes to the Reform Party ¨C allowing Labour to occupy the middle ground without necessarily advancing much themselves.

With Ed Davey¡¯s Lib Dems ¡°eating their lunch¡± in one part of the country, and voters elsewhere preferring the ¡°full-fat¡± Nigel Farage option to the ¡°semi-skim Tory option¡±, Ford said the Conservatives were left facing ¡°extinction¡±.

¡°The Conservatives won a landslide in 2019 by bridging the education divide, they then collapsed in 2024 because the education divide reopened, and right now we face the possibility that the education divide could become so deep that it actually kills them off altogether as a party that can win under first past the post.

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¡°They may well have gone from being the party of two tribes, Brexiteer school leavers on the one hand and home counties Remainers on the other in 2019, to being a party of no tribes and having essentially no geographical or social core.¡±

Led by strategist Morgan McSweeney¡¯s?plan to target?older school leavers, Labour won a landslide in 2024.?But Ford warned that a majority of seats at future elections will be dominated by graduate voters as a result of the expansion of higher education ¨C which could pose problems for a government that has done little to safeguard the sustainability of the university sector.

¡°The electoral landscape is never static, and what we have been seeing in the polls since the election is that Labour is losing a lot more support on its graduate socially progressive flank than it is on the Reform flank.

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¡°And if you see really tangible trouble for graduates and graduate interests like, for example, higher education institutions getting into trouble, then I think that would even accelerate that process.¡±

The ¡°diploma divide¡± is already a well-established issue?in the US, with colleges currently facing the consequences. And previous research has warned that the growing electoral turnout gap between graduates and non-graduates risks leaving the UK government exposed to populism.

Also speaking at the event, Ralph Scott, a political scientist at the University of Bristol, said his research has shown that higher education represents an ¡°emerging political cleavage¡± in Britain.

Graduates and non-graduates identify more with those from within their group and are more likely to vote for those who match their educational level, he added.

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¡°°Õ³ó¾±²õ educational divide will continue to restructure party competition in Britain over the coming years.¡±

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com