C2s are the key to a Tory landslide
Iain Dale is getting excited over the social class crossbreaks in the latest ComRes poll, which show a big Tory lead amongst C2s. I wouldn't get too het up about it - voting intention in class crossbreaks jumps about wildly from poll to poll because of the small sample sizes, so it's very easy to cherry pick one that looks nice. However, Iain is absolutely right to focus on the C2s.
The graph below shows the Conservative lead in each social class break in ICM polls since summer 2007 at the height of the first Brown bounce. I've used a rolling average of 4 polls to try and iron out the worst of the noise.
As you can see, back in Summer 2007 the Conservatives only led amongst the ABs. After the non-election and the end of the initial Brown bounce all social groups swung heavily back towards the Conservatives, leaving a good Tory lead amongst ABs and C1s, and the parties roughly neck and neck amongst C2s and DEs.
By the start of 2008 the Tories had pretty much sealed the deal with C1s, who have since been as staunchly Tory as ABs. The swing back towards Labour at the end of 2008 seems to have barely affected C1s at all. Similarly, DEs don't seem to be moving much further towards the Conservatives - in summer 2008 as Labour collapsed into internal infighting they were reporting small Conservative leads, but realistically these are the most solid Labour voters and it doesn't shift very far into Tory territory.
The movement in 2008 was amongst C2s. As Labour fell apart in Summer 2008 C2s shifted wholesale over to the Conservatives, recording the largest Tory leads of any social group. After the bank bailout it was the same C2s who swung massively back in Labour's favour.
Have they now gone back the other way? Of course we don't have an ICM poll since the recent reverse in the polls and, even if we did, as I warned at the top of this post, given the volatility of the class breaks in standard polls, we should never draw any conclusions based on a single poll. At the moment therefore, we don't know whether the C2s are now swinging back to the Conservatives. What doesn't appear to the be case however, based on last year's polls, is that the difference between a hung Parliament and a Tory landslide will largely be down to how the C2s vote.
