UK - Gay voters now more likely to vote Tory than Labour

This is a pretty interesting article from UK LGBT magazine Pink News on the growing support for the Tories over Labour.

If gays are starting to understand that it's the conservative side of politics who are the real champions of equality and freedom then how far behind can other left-leaning demographic groups be?

Gay and lesbian voters are now more likely to vote Tory rather than Labour, a poll has suggested.

The survey of 1,800 gay men and women found 30 per cent said they intend to vote

Conservative at the next general election.

It was conducted by the Gaydar consumer panel for the Outright Consortium last month.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats each took 18 per cent of the vote, while 17 per cent said they will not vote and nine per cent were undecided.

At the last general election in 2005, 33 per cent voted Labour compared to 21 per cent who voted Conservative.

Unsurprisingly, 73 per cent said the next election will be fought on the state of the economy. Ten per cent said unemployment would be a key issue and five per cent cited immigration.

Fifty-nine per cent of respondents felt Gordon Brown was not doing a good job as prime minister.

In terms of finance, 24 per cent of those questioned were most worried about losing their job in the recession, compared with 20 per cent who were concerned about paying their mortgages.

However, 22 per cent said they were not worried at all.

Although 71 per cent blamed the banks for the recession, 72 per cent said they were not planning to change financial services providers in the near future.

Just over half (51 per cent) said the recession had impacted on their spending, with 35 per cent admitting to making the biggest cutbacks in their social lives.

Here are some interesting responses from among the comments to the article:

• I'm gay and I vote Tory- so a few respondants have met their first one! We vote Tory because we like being treated as equals- no extra nanny state 'help' for us...we also like to walk neighbourhoods without being beaten up- breaking news- we feel safer in Tory neighbourhoods like Surrey than on Council Estates in Hull. Conservatives live and let live...more than can be said than in many Labour voting areas.

• Too right it's for real. And there's plenty of us who "admit" to voting Tory, more all the time in fact. Gay people as a group ought to find Conservative ideas about liberty and individualism more attractive than the collectivist alternatives.

• I'm happy to 'admit' it too. One of the reasons you are seeing the overt change in position on gay issues is that there are so many gay poeple in the Tory party these days. Equality legisation came from Europe not from Labour and whoever was in power would have had to introduce it - that argument is long dead as far as I'm concerned. I am however concerned that what Labour has done economically to this country will haunt us for generations, gay or straight, and I find it incredible that so many gay people who seem to use this site have failed to educate themselves on the politics that affect their lives so greatly. How much corruption needs to be exposed before people realise that New Labour was merely a vehicle for Tony Blair's ambitions and that Gordon Brown is just the patsy that was handed the smoking gun when Blair had set the country into a terminal downward spin?

• "I've never met a gay person that votes Tory" - Ah bless - what a funny little world Stuart and his red-rinse old dears inhabit! Its a generational thing Stuart - us younger gay men (younger in body and/or in mind) who look forward with optimism and will be voting in a new Tory government in our 1000s next year have no interest in harking back to all that class-war, gays-as-victims, blah blah politics of the last century and the 1980s - who is interested in the 1980s? Life, the world and politics has moved on - blue is the new red. The 21st Century Conservatives are very much in tune with the 21st Century gay man and woman - look at any london borough council or the Mayor's office or local conservative party office and you will find scores of conservative gay politicians, advisors and organisers. So don't look back and be a bitter old has-been, look forward and join the in-crowd, vote Conservative!

(Nothing Follows)