ABSTRACT
Britain’s party members are relatively old, relatively well-off, and relatively well-educated. They are also more likely to live in the South of England and (probably because more of them belong to left-wing than to right-wing parties) more likely to work in the public sector than one might expect. There are significantly fewer women than men amongst them, as well as far fewer people from ethnic minorities than in the population as a whole. There are, however, some more or less predictable differences between parties. Members of left-wing parties, for instance, tend to be slightly younger than those who belong to parties on the right. Left-wing parties are also significantly more gender-balanced. All parties, however, have memberships that are more middle class than their voters. That mismatch will become increasingly evident in the Tory Party if it continues to attract more support from socially conservative and nationalist working-class voters but alienates some of its more liberal, cosmopolitan, middle-class voters. But any mismatch between Labour’s members and voters looks set to decrease as its voter base looks more and more like its middle-class, degree-holding membership.
