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The Lost Majority: The 2017 election, the Conservative Party, the voters and the future

The 2017 election was supposed to be a walkover for the Conservative Party – but the voters had other ideas. My new book, The Lost Majority, aims to help explain how the unexpected result came about and why the thumping victory the Tories expected never happened. More importantly, it looks at the state of the party’s relationship with the voters in the wake of the campaign, and the challenge of winning a majority in parliament when even 42 per cent of the vote was not enough for outright victory. I have written about my main conclusions in today’s Telegraph.

The book draws on my research before June 8th and on election day itself, as well as comprehensive new polling conducted since the electorate delivered its verdict. Among many other things, my analysis looks in detail at the differences between Conservative Loyalists, 2015 Tories who stayed with the party this year; Joiners, who switched to the Conservatives; Defectors, who switched away; and Considerers, who intended to vote Tory at some point during the campaign but ultimately decided against. The explain much about the election result and the implications for the job of putting together a winning coalition of voters in the future. Full data tables from this new research, together with the demographics of these four groups, can be downloaded below.

The Lost Majority can be ordered from Biteback Publishing.

 

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