Reform still has a woman problem
News from Tim Shipman of the Spectator's parish that Reform is gaining notable ground among women is based in some statistical truth. This is not however, quite as exciting as the front page of a magazine may make it out to be.
The right has almost always had a disadvantage among women in Britain. Ukip polled 2 points worse among women in 2015 than among men. Support for Leave in 2016 was the majority feeling among men, and a minority feeling among women. And in the 2019 European elections, the Brexit Party polled at 34 per cent with men to 29 per cent with women. This is a persistent, if not necessarily large, gender gap for anything to the right of the liberal, centre-right Tories.
Reform's advance in the polls this year has come from all corners of the country, young and old, male and female. My Britain Elects poll tracker, which collates all the polls, subsamples and all, has this to say about the gender breakdown: Reform today has a 6-point disadvantage among women (they have the support of 34 per cent of men to 28 per cent among women).
Women are less sure about their vote than men. This is either because women are typically more honest than men about their doubts when it comes to the pollsters, or less sure generally. Whereas just 21 per cent of men tell pollsters they are either unsure or will stay at home at the next election, this is at 30 per cent among women.
Uncertainty among women makes for a less fixed gender gap. Reform could indeed be gaining disproportionately among women – but it's unlikely. In the run-up to the general election progressive parties (Labour, the Greens, and the Lib Dems) had the vote of 50 per cent of men, and 49 per cent of women, including undecideds. It would be reasonable to assume that uncertainty among women right now is predominantly among progressive women unsure of where to place their vote, or whether to vote altogether – not whether to vote Reform.
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So the fact remains: Reform has a woman problem. But the fact that it's not worse than 6 points could be reasonably written up as a win, in any case.
I've gone through the polling of the past decade and a half, and discovered something interesting: Ukip in 2015 polled 12 per cent nationally, and, according to Ipsos, exit-polled 2 points better among men than women. But at their peak in late 2014 when they were benefitting from parliamentary defections, parliamentary wins and at times 20 per cent plus in the opinion polls, that gender gap was much bigger than the 2 points of the following May. It was 11 points. In short, the greater support Ukip got, the greater the gender gap; their ceiling among men was higher than among women.
With Reform, that's not happening right now. Reform had a 4-point disadvantage among women in 2024. It's 6 points now, despite more than doubling its support nationwide. There is a gender gap. There is a 'woman problem'. But the fact it's not worse is perhaps more interesting.
[See more: Shabana Mahmood's star is rising]
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