British Indian Voters Shift Rightward on Economy: Report

London, Oct 8 (PTI) British Indian voters along with those of Chinese heritage have been drifting rightward on the economy and are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour in the UK general elections, according to a new report based on an extensive UK-wide survey released on Tuesday.

‘Minorities report: the attitudes of Britain's ethnic minority population' by UK In a Changing Europe think tank and research firm Focaldata suggests that ethnic minority voters often have political and social views at variance not only with those held by the UK population as a whole, but also between different ethnic and religious groups of the country.

The analysis covers political views and values at both the 2019 and 2024 UK general elections to weigh up how attitudes have been changing despite Labour historically doing well among ethnic minority voters.

“British Indians and British Chinese voters tend to be right wing on the economy, expectations of the nation state, and views on welfare. Other minority groups sit much more firmly on the left,” the report finds.

“Some ethnic minority groups – particularly British Chinese and Indian voters – hold quite right-wing economic views in comparison to other ethnic minority voters. These views seem to have influenced the vote choice of these groups in 2019...British Indian, Chinese and Hindu respondents were the ethnic minority groups most likely to have voted Conservative in 2019 – a pattern repeated in 2024,” it said.

Voters of Indian heritage, along with those of Chinese and Caribbean backgrounds, also have another commonality – being much more concerned about government competence. These groups are also more likely than other ethnic groups to say politicians should be strong and effective, as opposed to intellectual or fair, the report states.

It notes: “There is also a particular interaction with religion among British Indian voters. Though Labour won more support across all ethnic minority religious groups than the Conservatives in 2019, their lead was smallest among Indian Hindus, at just 3 per cent. This was a group where Labour did less well in comparison to other religious groups in 2024.

“Indian Sikhs, however, were much less likely to vote Conservative in 2019, with one of the strongest levels of support for Labour of any religious group.”

Looking at British Indian and Chinese voters, the two ethnic groups with the highest proportion of 2019 Conservative voters, the most common barrier to voting Labour concerns the party's competence, in particular its management of the economy among British Indians.

The report, based on an online survey and polling samples of thousands of voters, concludes that at future elections, Labour cannot rely on ethnic minority voters as a “bloc” of support.

It adds: “We are at an inflection point in terms of how ethnic minorities vote… The political, social and economic values of British Indians and British Chinese voters, and to a lesser degree Black African voters, are structurally different from other minority groups – in particular British Caribbeans and British Muslims.

"These differences are not yet fully expressed in terms of voting behaviour (particularly due to the Conservatives' staggeringly bad defeat in 2024, where proportional swing hid large changes in voting behaviour), but will be in time as the former camp drifts rightward, and the latter to the left.