Newsblast readers’ poll – Mark Avery

I asked the readers of my monthly newsblast six questions on 21 November. Two were about their age and sex, one was about how they felt about the future of wildlife in the UK, and three were about politics.

Here are the responses of 464 people up until I closed the poll yesterday at 6pm (although almost all (79%) of the responses were from 21-23 November).

The respondents are quite like me – unsurprisingly: around my age and predominantly of my sex.

462 responses: 301 >65y; 111 55-64y; 35 45-54y; 12 35-44y; and 3 in the 25-34y category (they’ll grow out of it!).

463 responses: 63.5% male, 36.3% female, 0.22% rather not say.

They also were strongly skewed towards voting Labour at the last general election.

464 responses: Labour 43.5%; Green (E&W) 20.7%; Liberal Democrat 20.3%; Conservative 4.3%; SNP 3%; Did not vote 2.4%; Other 1.7%; Green (Scotland) 1.5%; Reform 1.3%; Plaid 0.9%; NI parties 0.4%

But they are heading for other parties, predominantly Green in their current thoughts.

459 responses: Green (E&W) 50.3%; Liberal Democrats 20.9%; Labour 7.2%; Green (SCO) 4.1%; Other 3.7%; Reform 3.3%; Would not vote 3.1%; SNP 2.6%; Conservative 2.2%; Plaid 2.2%; NI 0.4%

Just looking at the 199 folk who say they voted Labour in July 2024 and who indicated how they would vote in a general election tomorrow then only 28 would still vote Labour. 118 of those 199 say they would switch to the Greens (E&W), 30 to the Liberal Democrats and smaller numbers across other political parties or (not voting) but none to the Conservatives.

Recipients of my monthly newsblast are interested in nature – how do they feel about it?

And how do they think the current Westminster government is doing on the environment?

463 responses: 79.7% very badly; 19.9% badly; 0.4% well; 0% very well.

My interpretation of these results: these results are easy to interpret! This small and unrepresentative group of middle-aged or simply aged electors who are the type of people who notice the plants growing in the pavements and the fields and the birds flying overhead are hugely concerned about the state of British wildlife and think the government is doing a bad job on the environment. They voted Labour in the last general election because they were fed up with the Conservatives and gave Labour a chance. They now aren’t so much feeling buyers’ remorse but a mixture of buyers’ anger and buyers’ despair. They feel that Labour can’t be trusted any more than the Conservatives and are looking around for a political party who could do better. The Greens will be the main beneficiaries.

It’s probably a long time until the next general election and everything and anything could change. Hardly anyone votes primarily on environmental grounds alone but at a time of rapid biodiversity loss and climate change those issues loom very large in some people’s minds and those responding to this poll are some of those people. Labour has blown it with this group of people. I doubt they will win them all, us all, back, and at the moment there is no sign that they will even try.

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NewJersey Digital NewsNovember 29, 2025