General Election 2024: How have voting patterns changed in Sheffield since 2019?
A phrase thrown around in national news today is that this election was ‘lost by the Conservatives more than it was won by Labour’.
This sentiment is reflected in Sheffield’s voting patterns.
Although Labour won all six Sheffield constituencies (holding five and gaining one from the Conservatives), this does not tell the whole story.
On average across the six constituencies, the proportion of voters who went for Labour has gone up by a modest 2.3% compared to 2019.
Labour had a high starting point in 2019 - winning 47.9% of Sheffield’s votes then.
But former Conservative voters have abandoned the party in swathes.
The Tories’ proportion of the vote in Sheffield has dropped rapidly - from 29.7% of votes in 2019, to just 14.5% in 2024.
So where have the Conservative voters moved to? And if they have chosen Labour, where have former Labour voters which has left only a little growth? This graph, show below, shows some of these answers:
At least part of that answer seems to lie in the Green vote.
In Sheffield Central, Labour held the seat last night, but still lost 14% of the share compared to 2019.
Meanwhile, the Greens’ share in the constituency went up by 15%.
The other seat where Labour’s vote share dropped was in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (-4.9%).
Similarly, as Labour’s share fell, the Greens’ shot up, as they saw an 11.9% increase.
See the slideshow to compare each party’s share of the votes, from 2019 to 2024, and how your constituency compares to the city’s average.