Next UK General Election: The great graduate/non-graduate divide
Following on from the latest Ipsos-MORI voting poll we now have the full dataset which highlights what looks like being a big divide in public opinion – the choice of those who are graduates against those who are not.
In some ways this represents the fact that the proportion of grads has increased sharply since the Robbins report came out in the early 1960s and paved the way for the huge expansion in higher education.
What is interesting is that US polling generally highlights the split between college-educated parts of samples and those who are not.
The main polling number from Ipsos-MORI had the Tories with an 11% lead. Just confining this to graduates and LAB moves to a 12% lead. The biggest impact is on the LD vote where graduates outnumber non-grads by more than two to one.
One of my favourite reference pieces is this which shows the percentage of grads in each parliamentary constituency. Chesham & Amersham where the LDs had a spectacular by-election success a few weeks back has 40.5% grads. In Hartlepool the figure is 18.5%.