“I t doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always get in.” Sue Paling – wryly quoting a wise friend – is one of many undecided voters in Whitby. The landlady of the historic Black Horse pub on Church Street in the centre of the medieval North Yorkshire fishing town is representative of a disproportionate chunk of women nationally who are not sure where to place their vote on 4 July.
About 15% of voters are still undecided, according to the research consultancy More in Common. This is not unusual a month before a general election – but what makes it different is the significant proportion who backed the Conservatives in 2019, said the organisation’s UK director, Luke Tryl. What is even more interesting is the profile of these undecided voters: more likely to be women, owning their own home in towns and suburbs, with an average age of 61, less likely to have a degree, more likely to have voted for Brexit.
These are over-represented in the constituency of Scarborough and Whitby and, when looking at Labour’s list of targeted seats, the seat actually “becomes the seat which gives Labour an overall majority” based on current polling, Tryl said. Rather than being a “true” undecided, “Whitby woman” is really a “disgruntled Conservative”, and the challenge for Rishi Sunak’s party would be motivating her to vote at all, he added. “The parallel with 1997 is: it wasn’t just that the Tories lost lots of votes to Labour, it was that reliable .
