Areas that received money from the last government’s much-criticised levelling up fund tended to have lower votes for Reform UK in the general election, a study has found, indicating that projects delivering quick results may hold back support for populism.
The study by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank, billed as the first to examine a mass of data factors linked to support for Reform at the level of individual seats, identified a series of factors likely to make voters more likely to back Nigel Farage’s party.
Some were common to studies about populism in other countries, for example a correlation between a lower number of local voters having degrees and above-average support for Reform.
The party also tended to do well in places with a large white population, along with areas where this was becoming proportionally lower due to newer arrivals. Higher levels of crime were also closely associated with Farage’s party doing well.
More surprising was that an older population did not seem to point to a greater likelihood of Reform success, and modelling showed that seats that received levelling up funding tended to have smaller Reform vote shares than would be otherwise expected given their demographics.
Jamie Gollings, the research director at the SMF, said there were caveats about having to distinguish between correlation and causation, and that levelling up money might have gone mainly “to places that were more inclined towards the mainstream parties for other reasons – they weren’t necessarily giving money to places which were always going to be Reform”.
There could nonetheless be lessons for Keir Starmer’s government, he said: “This could be interesting for Labour. With their big infrastructure projects and planning reforms, these are things which might pay off only in decades.
“If they want to get credit in the more immediate term, they might need to try other mechanisms, whether making sure some of the construction jobs go to local people, or just making the area feel better, whether helping the local high street or sorting out potholes.”
Another notable finding was the way local political cultures seemingly play a role in whether Reform did well.
Seat-by-seat-charts showed the party under-performing around Liverpool and in the south-west of England, potentially due to the Liberal Democrats’ traditional presence there.
The study also found that, while faltering economic growth is regularly linked to support for populism, the effect can be more complex. Gollings noted the example of Clacton, in Essex, a seat won by Farage at the last election, which has had rapid growth in skilled jobs in the green economy, but ones that may not necessarily help many local people.
“Labour is really focusing on growth, and on the dashboards in the Treasury they might see new jobs or factories or investment coming here and there. And so things might look great from Whitehall, but the question is what are people actually experiencing on the ground?” he said.
“In some cases it may correspond, and income data may be a reliable prediction of how people actually feel about their economic circumstances. But it can be slightly more indirect.”
When it came to particular seats, more specific elements came into play. For example, the constituencies won by Reform at the election tended to produce a better result for the party than the demographics would suggest, an effect seemingly created by relatively high-profile candidates, such as Farage and the former Conservative MP Lee Anderson.
Similarly, Reform did less well than expected in some seats when the Conservatives fielded someone with a strong record on issues such as Brexit.
Gollings said the constituency-level research, which gathered more than 70 pieces of data for each seat, covering demographics, economics, public services and health, allowed for greater nuances to be uncovered, for example the surprising finding that a large white population alone was not enough to prompt support for Reform.
“Although we can see from polling that white people are more likely to vote for Reform, it doesn’t really say anything about what’s happening in the area,” he said.
“Whereas this kind of seat-level analysis shows that if there are people in places where there has been a moderate fall in the proportion of white people, they are more likely to vote for Reform.”
Despite the political effectiveness of levelling up funding, a separate report by the thinktank Labour Together shows successive governments have spent more on stimulating economic growth in the south-east than the rest of the country, with the imbalance at its worst under Boris Johnson.
The analysis of government spending figures shows that over the past 16 years ministers have spent nearly 15% more on housing, education and infrastructure projects in the south-east than elsewhere. The gap was at its widest from 2019 until 2024, when it was 19% on average.
Labour Together calculated that over the 16-year period from 2008 to 2024, the south-ast benefited from a total of £100bn extra in growth spending as a result.
