Breaking Blue

In July 2024 the Conservative Party suffered its worst ever electoral defeat. It now faces an existential “sink or swim” moment. How did this happen?

Breaking Blue, the largest UK post-election study of its kind, reveals the short, medium, and longer-term causes of the historic outcome and the route back to power for the centre-right. In a major collaboration with Focaldata and JL Partners, Onward has conducted comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research with over 24,000 participants.

The Conservative vote collapsed at the last election, retaining just half of its 2019 support. It suffered a defeat across all major demographic divides including age, ethnicity, social class, and Brexit preference, losing 23% of its vote to Reform UK and 7% to the Liberal Democrats.

Several layers of the 2019 coalition were stripped back, with the party’s support base becoming the oldest it has ever been, with the “cross-over” point where voters are more likely to vote Conservative rising to a historic 64. Geographically the party was paired back to its strongest heartlands.

After the landmark events of Partygate and Liz Truss’s mini-budget the party’s reputation for competence and honesty was damaged beyond repair, making the 2024 election almost unwinnable. The election campaign itself failed to improve matters for the party, with negative news stories such as Rishi Sunak’s exit from D-Day dominating and the election being seen through Labour’s narrative of “ending the chaos.”

The undoing of the coalition

The report introduces the “seven segments” of the British electorate, based on economic and cultural beliefs of voters, showing how the 2019 coalition was built. Boris Johnson’s campaign managed to win the core right-leaning segments of the electorate – Thatcherites, Christian Democrats and Right-Liberals – while also winning centrist Mainstream voters and nearly half of Traditional Left voters. This was achieved partly due to the party’s stance on Brexit, which was popular in Leave-voting working-class seats that traditionally voted Labour. 

In 2024 support collapsed with all voter segments, with the Conservatives retaining a majority only with the loyal Thatcherite base. Europe disappeared as a significant issue for voters, meaning the “glue” holding the support base together disappeared. To win again, the party will need to assemble a new electoral coalition that can hold together – but to achieve this it will have to navigate the conflict of values between target groups.

Priorities for voters

Breaking Blue shows that the biggest priorities for voters are competence and trust, immigration, and the NHS. In addition to chaotic and unethical conduct in government, voters felt that core 2019 pledges had been broken. The party must prove itself trustworthy both in conduct of political leaders and in competence to deliver.

Former and current Conservative voters are clear about what they want from the party. Immigration, tax and competence are the top three priorities. Despite the importance of immigration, Breaking Blue’s research reveals that a deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform would be damaging and divisive. 

The route back

To win back voters, the Conservatives must focus on “super-demographics.”These are voters who are disproportionately important in determining the result of elections due to their volatility and their efficient spread throughout the country. They are older, home-owning, C2 social grade voters who supported Leave in the 2016 referendum. This is the first group the Conservatives should target to rebuild their voter base. But they must build a voter pipeline beyond this group – winning them will be necessary but not sufficient.

The party needs to target Liberal Democrat and Reform defectors simultaneously – simply chasing one group or the other will not be enough. These are the voters most likely to say they would consider voting Conservative again. Breaking Blue reveals that these groups are more similar than different, caring about immigration, healthcare, public services, tax levels and competent leadership. They share more underlying values with current Conservative voters than Labour defectors, and will be the most likely to switch back. The party must pursue a “both and” strategy with these two defector groups.

There is an electoral mountain to climb. The Conservatives suffered from a number of factors that damaged them simultaneously, including the events of 2019-24, the poor short campaign and the efficient spread of the Labour vote. But the underlying truth is that half the party’s support base fell away and will need to be rebuilt on multiple fronts. 

It will be challenging, but by pursuing the right electoral strategy, regaining a reputation of competence and trust and directly addressing the policy priorities of target voters, it is possible the party could win again in five years’ time. This will involve honesty about what went wrong and a clear plan for the next period of Conservative government. There are tough choices ahead, but the party will need to grip them if it is to return to power in 2029.

James Kanagasooriam, Chief Research Officer of Focaldata said: “Breaking Blue articulates in a detailed way what went wrong for the Conservative Party. The findings are sobering for anyone on the centre-right, as the 2024 Conservative defeat looks even worse with further time and analysis. The Conservative Party has no divine right to exist, and the surveys and qualitative work suggest that we may be approaching a moment of deep fragmentation in the electorate and deep pessimism, from which it can be hard to curate a vision of Britain that can unite people. There is a pathway, but it is narrow and will require great care and courage from the next Conservative leader.”

Tom Lubbock, Co-Founder of JL Partners, said: “The big danger for the Conservative Party, heading into a critical party conference, is that it thinks, but doesn’t learn. Breaking Blue provides all the insight needed to do that learning. This research finds that the Conservative brand has been so tarnished that it really does face an existential moment. Each of the thousand cuts the Party suffered in the eyes of voters is laid out in detail and needs to be taken seriously. But above all else what the report reveals is that the party has to find a way to draw a line under what has come before, to establish in the eyes of the public that it has changed and can be trusted with power again. British voters are more volatile than ever, but middle England still exists in a space that should be natural territory for a renewed Conservative Party.”