Jewish voting intentions on the eve of the 2024 UK General Election

In this report:

As the General Election approaches, national polls show the Labour Party ahead of the Conservative Party by 20 percentage points. An average of polls at the time of publication has Labour at 41.9% and Conservatives at 22.2%, with Reform UK at 15.0%, well ahead of the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru and other parties. These polls do not, however, show the voting intention of Jewish people in the UK. The JPR Research Panel provides the research infrastructure to gather nationally representative data about Jewish people’s behaviours and attitudes on a wide range of social and political issues. This paper presents preliminary data on voting intentions for July 2024, based on 2,717 Jewish adults who responded to the 2024 Jewish Current Affairs Survey between 14-20 June, 2024.

Some of the key findings from this report:

• 46% of Jews in the UK intend to vote for the Labour Party, compared to 42% among the general British population.
• 30% of Jews in the UK intend to vote for the Conservative Party, compared to 22% in the general British population.
• Reform UK has attracted 6% of Jewish voters compared to 15% nationally, so has not split the right-leaning vote among Jews to the same extent as it has among the UK population as a whole. When Conservative and Reform UK votes are combined, the percentage of right-leaning votes among Jews (36%) is not significantly different to that found among the general population of the country (37%).
• There are significant differences in Jewish people’s voting intentions by denomination, with the more traditional and orthodox Jews much more likely to lean Conservative and the progressive and unaffiliated Jews much more likely to lean Labour.
• Young Jewish voters are much more likely than their elders to prefer a party other than Labour, Conservative or the Liberal Democrats.
• Data gathered during the current parliament show that support for the Labour Party among Jews has bounced back from an all-time low of 11% support in the 2019 General Election, when Jeremy Corbyn led the party.
• Jews in the UK are more prone to vote for one of the two large parties than the general UK population, with 10% supporting the Green Party (compared with 6% in the general population), 8% supporting the Liberal Democrats (11% general population), 6% supporting Reform UK (15% general population) and under 1% supporting SNP or Plaid Cymru (3% general population).
• Conservative voting varies substantially by age and denominational affiliation; Jewish women are more likely to vote Labour than Jewish men; and 29% of Jews under the age of 30 say they will vote for none of the traditional three large parties.