In conversation with Elizabeth Simon: the Red Wall, electoral behaviour and do universities make students woke?

Welcome to our Dods Research interview series. This is where we talk with leading academics in the UK about their area of expertise and what they can tell us about UK politics. As part of our Dods Research collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, our third interview features Dr Elizabeth Simon, and it covers topics including the Red Wall, education’s impact on politics, and changing voting patterns in the UK.

Joshua Wells: We are familiar with the term “the Red Wall”. It’s become part of our social and political discourse, you will hear it on the BBC or see it in articles in The Economist. There’s this narrative that Boris Johnson won it from Labour, Labour managed to win it back, and now Nigel Farage is causing problems for Labour in Red Wall seats. The term is pervasive in political commentary, but do we actually know what it means?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: Yeah, the “Red Wall” is one of those concepts that’s widely used but also widely misunderstood. People often think of it as a cluster of northern constituencies with a higher-than-average concentration of working-class voters, and many of them are, but there’s more to it.

The Red Wall is a concentrated set of seats where the Conservatives underperformed in 2017 — underperformed relative to what we’d expect given the socio-demographic profile of those areas. These were places we expected might vote Conservative in 2019, in many cases for the first time in history, or at least in recent history.

But it wasn’t just about that underperformance. These seats also tended to:

• have a strong Leave vote in 2016;
• show a substantial but minority Conservative vote in recent elections;
• and have a Conservative vote that was growing over time in a way that threatened Labour.

So, these were areas where the Tories were closing the gap with Labour, places where Leave sentiment was strong, and yet the Conservatives still underperformed from expectations.

The Red Wall emerged because in a cluster of seats across the Midlands and North, the Conservative Party started to seem less toxic to voters in the mid to late 2010s. Not everyone in those areas voted Tory, far from it. But opinion shifted just enough to make them marginal or even winnable. Demographically, Red Wall seats tend to have older populations, lower levels of formal education, and more working-class voters than average. That often means a combination of economic left-leaning views and more culturally conservative ones.

This is why Reform UK sees the Red Wall as a key target. They’ve proposed reversing winter fuel cuts, scrapping the two-child benefit cap, and taking a tough line on immigration, policies likely to land well in those areas. It might also help explain Labour’s own U-turn on winter fuel cuts. Labour won back many of these seats in 2024, but they’ll need to hold on to them next time if they are to secure a victory. If we define the Red Wall as it was intended, I think it remains a useful concept — and it certainly explains why Reform is focusing so much energy there.

Joshua Wells: That’s a really interesting definition. There is clearly more to the concept than one might guess. Your definition makes the Red Wall sound quite recent, post-2010, maybe even post-Brexit. That surprised me. I’d always assumed it referred to places that had voted Labour since the Attlee era.

Second, it struck me that you defined it more in relation to the Conservatives than to Labour, which is surprising, given it’s often thought of as Labour’s heartland. So, is it fair to say the Red Wall tells us less about Labour and more about the Tories at any given moment?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: Yes, to both points. The definition we used does come from post-2010 political shifts, particularly after Brexit. But many of those seats had never voted Conservative before, or at least not in living memory. So, the Red Wall idea draws on recent trends but is grounded in a longer Labour legacy.

And yes, you’re right that the definition focuses on Conservative vote share. There are also some Leave-related indicators, but we were interested in where the Tories were gaining ground. That made more sense because of the two-party nature of the system, if people weren’t voting Conservative, they were probably voting Labour.

So, while the Red Wall is defined around Conservative movement, it still tells us a lot about Labour, particularly why they lost those voters, and how they eventually got some of them back.

Joshua Wells: You mentioned education earlier as one of the key variables in Red Wall demographics. In recent years, right-wing politicians have speculated that universities shape young people’s politics — that they’re becoming too liberal, maybe even “woke”, and that this is down to ideological influence from lecturers. Is that instinct grounded in anything? Is there any actual evidence to support it?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: Yes, and this is actually what my PhD focussed on. There’s definitely a narrative, in the UK, the US, and parts of Europe, that universities are turning young people liberal. Conservative politicians and Farage have both pushed that line.

There’s truth in some of it. University graduates do tend to be more socially liberal, and more likely to vote for parties on the left of the political spectrum, than non-graduates. And academics do tend to be moreliberal than other professionals, say, lawyers or doctors.

But that doesn’t mean that university study causes liberalism. It could be that liberal people are more likely to go to university in the first place. And that’s plausible, because liberal attitudes are correlated with higher intelligence, family income, and social status, all predictors of university attendance.

In the UK, studies have tried to untangle this in two ways:

1. Tracking the same people before and after university to measure changes in attitudes.
2. Comparing siblings where one went to university and the other didn’t.

These studies find two main things:

• Most of the link between education and liberalism is down to selection. People who choose to go to university are, on average, already more liberal than individuals in the general population before they arrive.
• University itself does have a liberalising effect — but it’s relatively subtle. On a 5-point attitude scale, we might see a shift of about 0.2. So, it’s not ideological reprogramming. It’s a slight reinforcement.

On subject-specific effects, the findings are mixed. Some research says humanities and social science students shift their attitudes in a liberal direction more than students of other subjects. Other research suggests that STEM students shift their attitudes more — not because they become especially liberal, but because they started out less liberal and had more room to move.

So yes, university does nudge people in a liberal direction — but the bigger factor is that liberal people are more likely to go in the first place.

Josh Wells: I’m curious, I know you said the subject related findings are mixed, but do we see any courses that actually make people more right-wing? Say, economics students who get into Hayek and suddenly shift? Also, when you say “liberal”, are you using that broadly, or specifically in the cultural sense?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: Yes, some evidence suggests business and economics students might shift slightly to the right. But again, the results are patchy, nothing conclusive.

And on “liberal”, yes, I’m talking about social liberalism. Things like immigration, gender equality, racial equality, freedom of expression. The “woke university” debate is about cultural attitudes, not economic ones. That’s why I’ve kept the focus there.

It’s interesting, if STEM students are the ones who shift most, it suggests content isn’t the driver. It may be the environment. Humanities students might already be surrounded by liberal peers and ideas before they arrive. For STEM students, university might be their first real exposure to that — and they adapt.

Joshua Wells: Okay, stepping back for a moment. We’ve talked a lot about education, but if we treat it as one variable among many, what else shapes political leanings? What actually drives voting behaviour?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: You’ll laugh, but I’m going to loop back to education again, to show why class now matters less. There are loads of things that influence vote choice, far too many to name, but let’s focus on some things that have  shifted.

First: social class. In the 1960s, class was everything. The working class voted Labour; the middle class voted Conservative. That was about economic interests, and the parties reflected that divide. But that version of class — defined by manual versus non-manual occupations — matters less now. Two reasons:

1. The economy changed. As Britain moved to a service economy, manual labour declined, and non-manual jobs expanded. The working-class electorate shrank. Labour had to adapt — and start appealing to the growing middle class to survive.
2. Cultural issues rose in prominence. From the 60s onwards — with movements around race, gender, the environment, and later immigration and sovereignty — people started voting based on more than just economics.

That’s where we get cross-pressured voters. A middle-class person might lean right economically but left culturally, especially if they’re highly educated. A working-class voter might lean left on economics but right on culture, especially if they have less formal education. This helps explain why class-based voting has declined and why education now matters more, particularly when culture is salient. If economic issues come back to the fore, that balance could perhaps shift again.

Thinking about age now, in the 1990s, young voters backed the Conservatives only slightly less than older voters. By 2019, they were over 30 percentage points less likely to do so. That’s a massive shift. Housing is a big part of that. Home ownership rates among the young are at an all-time low. Many feel priced out — rents are rising, deposits are hard to save. More and more are living with their parents into their 30s or 40s.

That frustration translates into political disengagement — or hostility to the status quo. Some blame the Conservatives for the housing crisis. Others feel they simply don’t represent their interests. So, the issue of the day matters. If the housing issue were somehow resolved, the age gap might narrow, and some other demographic divide would likely rise in importance.

Joshua Wells: Let’s stick with age for a moment. Labour has pledged to lower the voting age to 16. Given everything you’ve said, what kind of impact would that actually have?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: It would probably help parties on the left, a bit. Labour would benefit slightly. But it might be an even bigger win for the Greens, who are popular with younger voters.

That said, it’s not a silver bullet. Some recent polling shows young men, in particular, showing interest in Reform UK. So, you might get a gender split: young women leaning Labour or Green; young men more open to Reform.

So yes, lowering the voting age could nudge things in Labour’s direction, but it won’t radically change their fortunes.

Josh Wells: You’ve explained that variables like age or education aren’t fixed, they shift depending on the moment. But for people who want to understand voting behaviour, there’s a more practical question: When do attitudes start to translate into votes? Is it weeks before an election? Months? Years? What kind of timeline are we talking about?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: Political scientists talk about the “impressionable years” — usually defined as everything up to age 25. That’s when core political attitudes tend to settle. People can still change their attitudes later in life — especially after major life events, like a move or a financial crisis — but most people’s views become fairly stable by their mid-twenties.

So, attitudes tend to be fairly fixed – and decided well in advance of elections – for the majority of the electorate. The decision of who to vote for is often much less settled though. Outside election periods, around 40 percent of Brits say they have no clear party preference. That doesn’t mean they’re entirely undecided — just that they cluster several parties quite closely when we ask them which they like best. Even in the final days of an election, many haven’t made up their minds. In 2024, more than 10 percent were still undecided two days before the vote. And nearly half of those who had chosen said they might still change their minds.

That’s a huge chunk of voters who were still open to persuasion two days before polling day. There are a few reasons for that:

• Weaker partisan identity — fewer people feel loyal to a single party now than they did in the past
• More choice — we’ve gone from two or three main parties to five or more.
• Decision fatigue — for some, the choice feels overwhelming, so they disengage.

Vote intention is often fluid until the final stretch. All of this volatility, combined with the fact that the next election is still a while off — makes it hard to draw firm conclusions from today’s polling data. A lot could change between now and then.

That said, some recent polling does suggest interesting trends. Reform UK, for instance, has polled in the high 20s, with Labour in the mid-20s, and the Conservatives trailing in the late teens.

But, and it’s a big but, we need to apply a bit of realism to those numbers. When voters are asked who they’d prefer as Prime Minister, all three major party leaders — Starmer, Ed Davey, and even Kemi Badenoch — tend to beat Nigel Farage. Starmer and Davey lead by 14 to 15 points, and Badenoch by around 4 points. That tells us two things:

1. There’s probably a ceiling on support for Reform — we may already be close to it.
2. There’s clear potential for other parties to win voters back, especially if they can sharpen their message or capitalise on a moment of change.

So yes — things look good for Reform right now. But will that still be true in 18 months? Hard to say. A lot depends on what happens between now and then.

Josh Wells: One last question, when people say they’re undecided in polls, do you as a political scientist take them at face value? Or do you assume that based variables such as; on who they are, where they live, how educated they are, you can probably guess how they’ll vote?

Dr Elizabeth Simon: Definitely the latter, at least to some extent.

People may say they’re undecided, or not planning to vote, but based on demographics, location, past behaviour, and attitudes, we can often make a pretty good guess. It’s never perfect. Pollsters work hard to balance their samples and weight responses, but people who respond to polls aren’t always representative. We’ve seen polling errors before, in 2016 and 2017, for example, so we always apply some scepticism. But political scientists do have a decent toolkit for reading between the lines.

Unless, of course, the world suddenly changes, and all our assumptions go out the window.