Since the reshuffle in No.10, there has been a lot of talk about whether the PM should choose between his new Northern spoils or his Southern heartlands.
Today, @ukonward publishes "No Turning Back", a detailed look at the parties' new voting coalitions. A few highlights:
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1. There has been a lot of sorting in the electorate over the last few elections, driven by Brexit and the realignment of British politics away from old divisions of class towards a values divide on culture and age.
This is from the 2015 result to the start of the 2019 campaign
2. There was further sorting during the 2019 campaign itself.
This is from the start to the end of the campaign. The Tories converted 71% of Brexit Party supporters during the campaign and 35% of DKs and WNVs. 6% of Lib Dem voters switched to Labour.
3. As a result, the two main parties have fundamentally different coalitions to five or ten years ago.
The Tories are more provincial, working class, regionally distributed. Labour are more metropolitan, middle class and urban.
4. It is also hard to overstate how different geography of the Conservative Party is to recent decades.
This is the 2019 party against the party after its 1997 defeat. The Conservatives now represent 57% of seats in the North and Midlands, their highest share since 1935.