We know the rise of the Greens & ReformUK Ltd has shifted voters away from supporting the Labour Party.

[reggiehere@mastodon.social]

@ChrisMayLA6

Presumably that red island at the top of the 2026 image is Labour's centre-right faction?

[androcat@toot.cat]

@ReggieHere

It's younger-middle-aged managerial folks, if I can read these scales correctly.

Both these axes are scaled in derivatives, so it's not very intuitive to me.

But could be the aspiring Streetings of the party.

@ChrisMayLA6

[rozeboosje@masto.ai]

@ChrisMayLA6 Someone posted an article a few days ago that featured the same graph. It also highlighted a massive flaw in the representation. What looks like losses from Labour to Reform is actually an artefact of the FPTP system, and it represents Reform's ability to mobilise people who wouldn't have voted otherwise. Labour's losses, allegedly, are mainly to the Greens. I can't find the article now, sorry.

[reggiehere@mastodon.social]

@androcat

Yes, that makes sense. An unfortnate gap between "briefcase" and "working" Labour.

@ChrisMayLA6

[marjolica@social.linux.pizza]

@ChrisMayLA6 link to Andy Cotgraves LinkedIn piece:

A great piece of data storytelling in The Economist this week? ✔️This one stopped me in the tracks - "what the heck am I looking at?" ❌But "what the heck am I looking at?" can also be… | Andy Cotgreave | 30 comments

A great piece of data storytelling in The Economist this week? ✔️This one stopped me in the tracks - "what the heck am I looking at?" ❌But "what the heck am I looking at?" can also be negative It's showing results for the local elections in the UK last week. In a nutshell, it's a party-territory-map based on age and education in each ward. It definitely takes time to parse the chart. The primary thing to take away is that Labour's "big red territory" has been eaten away by the Greens and Reform. What do you think? Too complicated? Could it have been done differently? My conclusion: I'm always in favour of pushing the envelope. And there's no reason a chart needs to be understandable in seconds. So I give it a 👍👍 cc Alex Selby-Boothroyd | 30 comments on LinkedIn

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)

[chrismayla6@zirk.us]

@ReggieHere

Not so sure; I took that to be younger professionals who still hadn't been convinced by the Greens, yet grew up in a social environment were voting right was sees as terminally uncool?

[chrismayla6@zirk.us]

@rozeboosje

yes, that also makes sense

[marjolica@social.linux.pizza]

@rozeboosje @ChrisMayLA6 yes, I recall that article too. Likewise no success in finding it again.

[geofcox@climatejustice.social]

@ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6
@ApostateEnglishman

The line roughly down the middle of the 2026 diagram also makes the generational divide very clear - and remember this is also an educational divide. The Labour governments of the 60s and 70s introduced comprehensive education and massively expanded higher education - in 1960 less than 5% of kids went to university, in 2019 over 50% went.

[androcat@toot.cat]

@ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6

I think I figured it out.
So the background colourings are a bit misleading. What is displayed is the wards (those granules in darker colour).
And the granules are tracked in two axes, by the population:
% managerial, and % aged 50.
So the wards haven't moved around a lot, because demographics haven't changed much.
Then the wards were colorized according to leading party, and given an imaginary "territory" to contextualize (the background colours). So you may well be right.

[unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyz]

@androcat @ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6

Yes, I was just thinking it would be clearer if they coloured the dots and didn't have the coloured backgrounds.

[notsoloud@expressional.social]

@ChrisMayLA6
How are these colorings done? There must be a lot of (over?)simplification going on here. No way the wards divide that nicely by just two variables. The middle should look a lot more mottled.

[reggiehere@mastodon.social]

@ChrisMayLA6

That would make sense. It's quite a confusing chart.

[reggiehere@mastodon.social]

@GeofCox

It is a pretty stark cut off. Makes a bit of a mockery of RefUK's claims to attracting younger voters.

@ChrisMayLA6 @ApostateEnglishman

[androcat@toot.cat]

@unchartedworlds @ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6

It's a striking outcome, though.

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@ChrisMayLA6 This diagram is misleading because it does not show the ages in proportion to their share of the population, or of their propensity to vote.

[bazzargh@hachyderm.io]

@rozeboosje @ChrisMayLA6 I think you might have read @Tupp_ed 's The Gist https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-britain-the-ungoverned-country/ - it has exactly that explanation of why this chart is misleading, and other charts that show a clearer picture.

[rozeboosje@masto.ai]

@bazzargh @ChrisMayLA6 @Tupp_ed That's the one. Thanks for finding it!

[thedonsielass@mas.to]

@bazzargh Thanks. Really useful article

[woo@fosstodon.org]

@ChrisMayLA6 The LibDems seem to have quietly doubled in size too, by their cunning technique of being silenced. I saw one on the wild yesterday, resorting to hand gestures at Jenrick. Not the one I'd have made but funnier.