By Eric Kaufmann, UnHerd
A popular narrative on both the Left and the Right is that the rise of the Green Party reflects young Britons’ struggles to buy a house and manage the cost of living. But this phenomenon is explained less by rent than it is by progressive social views.
In the wake of the Greens’ victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election last month, a YouGov poll showed the party in second place nationally, with 21% support. The age dynamics were especially striking: the Green Party was the top choice of those under 50, with nearly half of those aged 18-24 saying they would vote for Zack Polanski’s party. In the youngest age category, only 10% said they’d vote for either Reform UK or the Tories.
Are the young flocking to Polanski because they are struggling economically, or because they are drawn to his outwardly “kind politics”? To find out which theory is correct, I conducted a survey of nearly 400 British voters on the Prolific survey platform last week. Of this sample, 61% voted Labour or Green in 2024. Excluding non-voters, 42% of under-35s said they would vote for Polanski.
Age is by far the strongest demographic predictor of a Green vote: 46% of those aged 25 and under support Polanski compared to 5% of those over-55s. The young female effect is also noticeable. Among respondents aged 18-25, the female-to-male advantage for Polanski is 56-30, while it is 44-25 for the 26-35 group and 27-15 for the 36-45 group. By contrast, there is no Green gender gap among over-45s.
Green voters are more likely than Labour supporters to say that house prices should be lower, and that young people now have worse opportunities to buy a property than was true for past generations. However, these are beliefs shared by voters of all stripes. The dark green bars in the chart below show that among under-35s, there is only a modest difference (32%, 27% and 30%) in the share of Green, Labour and Reform voters who picked housing as a top-three issue from a list of 13.
By contrast, when asked whether trans women (those born male who identify as women) should be permitted to enter women’s sporting competitions, 60% of younger Green voters agreed, in line with Polanski’s views. This compares with just 25% of Labour voters, 8% of Tory voters and 2% of Reform voters the same age. Evidently, the Green Party stands out far more on cultural issues than on housing.