The New Statesman. In the aftermath of the Green Party's triumph in the Gorton and Denton

by-election, and with local elections in London councils and other major cities coming up, Labour is

losing the left progressive voters it could once rely on having nowhere else to go. Now, the biggest study ever of these

voters shared exclusively with the new statesman reveals the true risk to Labor's future of

leaving them behind. I'm Anous Shekelian and this is Daily Politics from the New Statesman. And today

I'm joined by my guest Steve Akehurst of Persuasion UK, who co-authored this report with 38 degrees. Hi, Steve. Hi, thanks for having me back. Yeah, lovely to have you back on the podcast. You're our sort of go-to polling analyst, aren't you, these days? So this work is fascinating, and it's done by surveying 10,000 voters, is that right? Yeah, that's about. And a randomised controls trial style approach. And it's found out

who these so-called progressive defectors are, why they're deserting Labor and what impact this could

have on Labor's electoral prospects. So let's start with who they actually are. So can you paint a

picture of progressive defectors for us? Yeah, so these are voters that voted Labour at the last election

that have now gone principally to the Greens,

but also to the Lib Dems, plied in Wales,

the SMP in Scotland, Gaza independence as well in some places.

And there's a couple of things straight out the blocks

to kind of make clear about these voters, I think.

And one of them is sort of their age, like they are distinctly millennial, I would say.

Of course, of all ages, but particularly kind of mid to upper 30s.

They're graduates.

They are, like I would say, I would describe them as kind of frustrated lower middle class voters, basically.

They have university educations. They have an income that's okay, but they have a mortgage that they are struggling to afford, or maybe they're still stuck privately renting. So that is kind of roughly what they look like, very millennial, very low, middle class graduate. I think in terms of where they live, that's the other important thing. It's really important to get out of this idea that all of these voters just live in Hackney or other bits of London that people in Westminster's the lighter frequent. And that caricature of voters of these voters are not really true. They're actually spread out across the country, but you particularly find them in what I would call the original kind of blue wall seats, those commuter belt seats on the outskirts of large urban areas, as well as in Wales, for example.

So there's that kind of geographical flavour to them, but they live everywhere, and that's like roughly what they look like. And that's quite important to understanding their attitudes and also to why they've defected and what might bring them back, if anything. Well, that's really helpful because often there's been this tendency in Labour, particularly on the sort of Labour right, that these kind of voters have nowhere else to go, other than Labour, come a general election. And they're sort of dismissed, aren't they? The more socially conservative faction of Labor, blue Labor might dismiss them as the lanyard class, the sort of do nothing, professional managerial class, you know, who work from

home and are captured by group think and don't understand the country. But it's not just that,

is it? No, it's not at all. And I think that caricature is a big part of the reason. It's created

...