Resurgent Remain and a Rebooted Revolt on the Right: Exploring the 2019 European Parliament Elections in the United Kingdom

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election took place against the backdrop of the vote for Brexit and the failure of parliament to agree on a withdrawal agreement. Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party topped the poll and the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats, which called for a second referendum on EU membership, returned from electoral obscurity to take second place while other pro-Remain parties similarly performed well. In sharp contrast, the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, recorded their lowest combined vote share since they became the main representatives of the two-party system. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data to explore what happened at the 2019 EP election in Great Britain. Our evidence suggests Labour suffered from a ‘pincer movement’, losing support in its mainly white, working-class ‘left behind’ heartlands but also in younger cosmopolitan areas where Labour had polled strongly at the 2017 general election. Support for the new Brexit Party increased more significantly in ‘left behind’ communities, which had given strong support to Leave at the 2016 referendum, suggesting that national populists capitalised on Labour’s woes. The Conservatives haemorrhaged support in affluent, older retirement areas but largely at the expense of the resurgent Liberal Democrats, with the latter surging in Remain areas and where the Conservatives are traditionally strong, though not in areas with younger electorates where the party made so much ground prior to the 2010-2015 coalition government. Lastly, turnout increased overall compared to 2014 but individuals living in Leave areas were less motivated to vote. Overall, our findings suggest that those living in Remain areas were more driven to express their discontent with the Brexit process and more inclined to support parties that offer a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership.


Introduction
The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections took place amid considerable political volatility.
Between the 2016 vote to leave the European Union (EU)  Amid these events there has emerged a lively debate about the changing nature of British politics and the extent to which the 2016 vote for Brexit and its aftermath is paving the way for a 'realignment'. Since the referendum, some studies have suggested that the underlying social and demographic divides that contributed to the vote for Brexit have hardened, that there have emerged new divides between Remainers and Leavers, and that people's views toward Brexit have become more polarised. 1 Such changes, it is often argued, are having a strong impact upon voting behaviour, prompting Remainers and Leavers to question their traditional allegiances and reshaping patterns of support for Britain's political parties. It is still too early to ascertain the full impact of Brexit but studies of the 2017 general election have shown that whereas the Conservative Party polled much stronger in pro-Leave areas it suffered significant losses in pro-Remain areas, while Labour, though advancing more evenly across the board, made especially strong gains in areas that voted Remain. 2 The 2019 EP election contributes directly to this debate. Taking place less than three years on from the 2016 referendum and less than two years since the 2017 general election, the EP election was widely seen as a proxy second referendum between Leave and Remain. Like the first referendum in 2016, it delivered a shock. Nigel Farage's six-week-old Brexit Party, which advocated a 'hard' Brexit on World Trade Organization (WTO) lines alongside populist attacks against 'the establishment', finished first with 30.5 per cent of the vote. The strongly pro-Remain Liberal Democrats came second with 19.6 per cent of the vote, their highest share at any EP election and the highest at any national election since 'Cleggmania' erupted in 2010.
Labour, the main party of opposition, finished third with just 13.6 per cent of the vote, its lowest share at any nationwide election since 1910. The Greens finished fourth with 11.8 per cent, its best result since 1989, while the governing Conservative Party finished fifth, on just 8.8 per cent, its lowest share of the vote in its entire history.
Such a result throws up important but as yet unanswered questions. Did Britain's Leavers, frustrated at the failure to leave the EU, turn out in their droves or did they stay away due to protest and disillusionment? Did Remainers, on the other hand, use the EP election as an opportunity to voice their support for a second referendum on EU membership? Where did the Brexit Party get its votes from? Did Nigel Farage's new party depend strongly on the same types of 'left behind' voters who had previously flocked to the UK Independence Party or did the Brexit Party manage to reach out to a wider audience by downplaying more divisive issues like immigration in favour of populist attacks against 'the establishment'? 3 Was the Labour Party electorally damaged by the Brexit Party in its traditional heartlands and by pro-Remain parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens in younger, more cosmopolitan areas?
Did the Conservatives, who had promised to deliver Brexit but failed to do so, see their support haemorrhage to the Brexit Party or from 'One Nation' Tories switching to a resurgent Liberal Democrats? And, overall, do strong results for the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats signals a hardening of the divides between Remainers and Leavers?
In this paper, we explore these questions by drawing on a wealth of aggregate voting data and census information at the local authority level in Great Britain. 4 In doing so, we aim to contribute to the wider debate about how Brexit is impacting upon British politics and expand our previous work in this area. 5 Taking a step back, we assess whether the results of the 2019 EP elections suggest a hardening of Britain's Brexit divides and if this electoral tremor could be the precursor to yet another major earthquake. After situating the election in wider context and providing an overview of the results, we turn to examine these deeper questions.

The 2019 EP Election: An Overview of the Results
One of the striking features of post-referendum Britain is that ever the country voted to leave the European Union its politics has increasingly looked 'European'. Like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, in the aftermath of the 2019 EP election observers of British politics were left to reflect on their country's increasing political fragmentation, polarisation, rising volatility and a surge of support for national populists and other challengers that appeared to advance at the expense of the established parties. 6 Britain might once-upon-a-time have been known around the world for its stable and quintessential two-party system but ever since 52 per cent of voters had decided to leave the European Union its party system has come under serious strain and has perhaps never before looked so vulnerable.
At the same time, however, accounts that trace this flux solely to Brexit are both narrow and misleading. As studies have already made clear, while Britain's Brexit moment may well have exacerbated a fragmenting political landscape and increasing polarisation much of this was visible long before the country had decided to debate its EU membership. 7 These deeper currents had swirled beneath the two-party system for decades and were central to explaining a succession of events that took place before the 2016 referendum, including but not limited to: more than one in three voters opting for parties other than Labour or the Conservatives at the 2010 general election; the rise to dominance of the Scottish National Party in Scotland; the emergence of UKIP as a serious challenger during the 2010-15 parliament; and the arrival of higher rates of volatility which arguably helped the Conservatives secure a surprise majority at the 2015 general election. This longer-term story is reflected in Figure 1, which presents the declining share of the vote going to either Labour or the Conservatives at general and European Parliament (EP) elections. At general elections, whereas until the mid-1970s nine in ten voters were effectively 'locked in' to the two-party system, routinely casting their ballots for Labour or the Conservatives, by the time of the 2005 and 2015 general elections this had fallen below seven in ten. Given this trend, the 2017 general election, which saw eight in ten endorse the two main parties, looks like something of an outlier and there were already good reasons to question whether the two-party system had really been restored. The two main parties have seen a far more dramatic and consistent decline in public support at EP elections. During the first round of EP elections in 1979, support for Labour and the Conservatives was on par with their support in the general election that occurred the same year. But, over time, their combined support at EP elections declined markedly, and the gap between general and EP elections increased. When the electoral system for EP elections was changed in 1999, from first-past-the-post to proportional representation, combined support for the main parties dropped far more rapidly, such that by 2004 fewer than half of all voters were voting for one of the two main parties.
Britain's party system, therefore, had already been experiencing deep and profound change before it even reached the 2019 EP elections. Nonetheless, this election appeared to strengthen the pressure on the main parties in a number of ways. Even accounting for the longer-term decline in combined public support for Labour and the Conservatives, the 2019 EP election delivered an exceptional outcome: support for the two main parties plummeted to just 23 per cent, their lowest combined share since they became the main representatives of Britain's two-party system. The EP elections also saw the continuing fragmentation of British politics with the emergence of two entirely new political parties -the strongly pro-Leave Brexit Party and the strongly pro-Remain Change UK -as well as the electoral resurgence of the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
The Brexit Party, which would go on to finish first at the election was the result of two In the polls, support for the Brexit Party increased quickly. Between Farage's appointment as leader and the party's launch it averaged 12.3 per cent of the vote; in the second half of April 25 per cent; and then across all polls in May 32 per cent.  The big losers were the two main parties. But the Conservatives (-15.6) lost much more than the Brexit Party (+8.5) gained (even when combined with UKIP), to the tune of around 7 percentage points. Similarly, the Liberal Democrats (+12.8) and Greens (+4.0) combined gained much more than Labour lost (-10.3), to the tune of around 6 percentage points. It is, therefore, far too simplistic to say that voters abandoned the Conservatives to vote for a 'harder' Brexit option or that voters abandoned Labour to vote for an unambiguous pro-Remain party.
Rather, these results underline the important role of deeper divides in British society and so we need to explore some of these relationships in more depth. Because the analysis that follows is based on aggregate-level data we need to be cautious about drawing inferences about the attitudes and voting behaviour of individuals. Nonetheless, these data and the analysis offer a useful insight into the geographical divides that are shaping British politics and the factors that influenced the latest election as the country negotiates and navigates Brexit. But before we look at where the votes went, let's first examine how the Brexit divide affected who voted or not.

The 2019 EP Election: Exploring Turnout
We can start our analysis by investigating turnout. One big unknown of the 2019 EP elections was the extent to which citizens would participate. Would Leavers, fed up with Parliament's failure to deliver Brexit, turn out in their droves or would they stay away in protest? Would Remainers use the election to express support for a second referendum, or a 'People's Vote'?
Past work on the 2017 general election has already suggested a backlash among Remainers, with turnout at that contest being significantly higher in areas of the country that, at the 2016 referendum, had voted Remain and/or which had high concentrations of young people, ethnic minorities and degree-holders. 10 But to what extent was this also true at the 2019 EP elections?
The overall rate of turnout was 37 per cent, 1.4 percentage points higher than in 2014 and the second highest rate since the first EP election in 1979. turnout was still well below the average across EU member states (see Figure 4).  We would therefore expect turnout change to be less in those council areas that had elections in 2014 than those that didn't. This is borne out by the results. Turnout increased, on average, by 3.6 percentage points in councils that did not have 2014 local elections compared to 0.25 percentage points in places where they did. There is also evidence of turnout apathy among those living in local councils which had elections three weeks prior to European election-day.
In these places, turnout increased, on average, by 1. This evidence suggests there may have been a counter mobilisation against Brexit in places where support for leaving the EU was low. Closer examination of the data bears this out. Table 1  given strong support to leaving the EU in 2016 were less likely to vote at the 2019 EP election than they had been at past elections, even when controlling for socio-demographic factors.
Turnout also fell most in more economically deprived areas, where larger numbers of people rent their homes from the local council and/or have low levels of education. Turnout also declined further in more ethnically diverse areas. As noted earlier, turnout was significantly higher in places where local elections did not take place in 2014 or 2019. Yet, even after controlling for this, people living in Leave areas were less motivated to vote at the 2019 EP elections, suggesting that it was those living in Remain places who used the election to express their discontent with Brexit and voice their support for a second referendum. 0.552 0.628 Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Brexit and the EP Election Result
We now turn our attention to exploring how the result of the 2019 EP election was influenced by divides between Remainers and Leavers over Brexit. At first glance, the big winner was the Brexit Party which attracted nearly one in three voters despite only being launched six weeks before the election. As we have already noted, the Brexit Party performed especially well in strong Leave areas while its weakest results came in districts that had given strong support to Remain, much like UKIP in 2014. Indeed, Figure 6 reveals how there is a very strong (R 2 = 0.96) and positive relationship (b=1.12*) between support for the Brexit Party in 2019 and support for UKIP in 2014. Farage effectively cannibalised the UKIP vote, drawing much of his support in areas that had previously given strong support to his former party. This is not surprising given that the Brexit Party had targeted these areas during its EP campaign and that Brexit Party organizers made a deliberate choice, early on in the campaign, to appeal direct to UKIP voters. Individual-level data from Lord Ashcroft adds to this picture of a strong overlap between the two parties; more than two-thirds of people who had stayed loyal to UKIP at the 2017 general election voted for the Brexit Party two years later. 13 Such data reflect how the Brexit Party benefitted from pre-existing divides in British society and much of its support was 'baked in' before the 2019 EP election had even commenced.   all. This suggests that the Conservatives who were going to defect to Nigel Farage had already done so in 2014, and so his latest insurrection did not make much difference to their vote share.
By contrast there is much stronger evidence that it was in fact the Liberal Democrat surge that inflicted most damage on the Conservatives. We find a strong relationship (R 2 = 0.42). In places where the Lib Dems increased their share of the vote, the Tories suffered major setbacks. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with the Greens (R 2 = 0.11). These findings stress the importance of sequencing in order to understand how Brexit is impacting the main parties. The story with respect to Labour is not so clear cut, which given their ambiguity on Brexit perhaps comes as no surprise. Although Labour suffered a historically bad election result, there are no easy lessons to be drawn from which party benefitted at their expense. There is no significant relationship between Brexit Party gains and Labour losses, either across the country or in England. In some places where the Brexit Party made substantial gains Labour suffered big losses, but in other places where the Brexit Party prospered Labour's vote share held up reasonably well. Similarly, there is only a very weak relationship between Liberal Democrat gains and Labour losses, and if anything, the relationship is positive, which implies that on average Labour's vote held up slightly better in places where the Lib Dems surged than in places where they did not perform so strongly.

Figure 9: Labour losses and Brexit Party gains and Lib Dem gains
There are a number of possibilities that may explain why there is no obvious answer to the question of which party prospered from Labour's decline. One possibility is that different parties benefitted in different places. For example, perhaps the Liberal Democrats benefitted in certain areas (potentially areas that backed Remain) whereas the Brexit Party benefitted in other places (potentially areas that backed Leave). If this is the case then Labour faces very different strategic pressures in different parts of the country, and has to potentially deal with a Brexit threat in some places but a Remain threat in others. Another possibility is perhaps even more difficult to deal with. Put simply, that the lack of an overall pattern is because Labour lost votes to both the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party at the same time in the same places. Even in the most heavily pro-Brexit communities there are still close to 30 percent who backed Remain (and vice versa). If strategic ambiguity alienates both Leavers and Remainers then Labour may be losing Leave voters in Remain areas to the Brexit Party as well as Remain voters in Leave areas to the Liberal Democrats. The difficulty with this possibility is that it does not even provide an opportunity to tailor the message that the party wishes to communicate in different parts of the country.

The 2019 EP Elections: Analysis of the Results
Closer inspection of the data provides support for a number of these narratives but not all. Table   2 reports seven OLS regression models of party change from 2014-19 using the same sociodemographic controls as previously and the Leave vote in each local authority from the 2016 EU referendum. For the Conservatives and Labour, there is evidence that both parties lost ground in their traditional heartlands. The Conservative vote held up in more deprived areas and places with more young people while it haemorrhaged in affluent, older retirement areas.
Labour did better in more diverse places but suffered from a 'pincer movement', losing ground amongst its traditional white working class left behind heartlands while support also waned where Labour did well in 2017, particularly in places where there are lots of young people.
Labour's support also held up more in Leave areas after accounting for socio-demographics.
Simply put, Labour's Brexit stance did not pay off among the electorate it had won over in 2017 and in those Remain areas where it had made so much ground just two years previously.
By contrast, the Brexit Party saw their vote increase more in white, older, more deprived areas and in those places that had given strong support to leaving the EU. This demographic profile more closely fits the profile of Labour's traditional base than it does the Conservatives base.
The Liberal Democrats were one of the other parties to prosper from the collapse in support for the two main parties. Our model results suggest that support for the Liberal Democrats increased more sharply in affluent areas and among those with higher educational qualifications. Interestingly, they failed to make ground in more diverse areas and particularly places with lots of young voters. While, as expected, the party saw their vote rise more in Remain areas, it is noticeable that their socio-demographic profile is far closer to places where the Conservatives are traditionally strong -mainly white, affluent old/retirement areas -and not places with younger electorates where the Liberal Democrats made so much ground prior to entering coalition government in 2010.The Greens performed relatively poorly in Wales and particularly Scotland so here we re-run the model to examine its vote change in England only.
Generally speaking, the Greens gained support both in less diverse traditional left behind areas and in those areas with a younger demographic. As expected given its strong backing for a second Referendum on Brexit, support for the Greens increased more in Remain areas of England than Leave. The SNP saw their support increase in more economically deprived places as Labour's vote collapsed and unsurprisingly given their anti-Brexit stance in strong Remain areas.  (1) (2)  better where the Liberal Democrats did not make as much ground. Conversely, the Brexit Party vote change has a significant positive effect on changes in Conservative support inferring that its vote held up more in areas where the Brexit Party performed well. The Brexit Party did not make gains at the expense of the Conservatives but from other parties, in particular Labour.
Both interactions with education though show no effects, suggesting that Liberal Democrat gains at the expense of the Conservatives were not especially higher in those places containing more people with degrees than anywhere else. to the Conservative Party was at least partly responsible for David Cameron's fateful decision to offer and hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership. But if that decision had been made in the hope of putting the question of Europe to rest for a generation, unifying the Conservative party, and winning back Eurosceptic conservatives who had defected to UKIP then it is safe to say that this has not happened. Indeed, the lesson to draw from the 2019 EP elections is that both the Conservatives and Labour are under palpable electoral pressure to solve the Brexit issue and that any 'end game' could break the coalition of ideas and shared purpose that have been central to their longevity and electoral dominance.
Fast forward five years and Farage still dominates the polls, albeit with a different party.
Rather than the Conservative Party winning back Eurosceptic voters, many of whom appear to have simply swapped their allegiance to UKIP for the Brexit Party, all the centre-right has succeeded in doing is alienating another group of voters in its affluent heartlands who in 2019 switched in large numbers to the Liberal Democrats. With the Conservative parliamentary party more divided than ever, and a leadership election in full throw, the centre-right's decision to double down on Brexit may end up further alienating these voters. The Conservative Party is now under attack from both sides and there will be no easy way out.
The long-term winners could yet be an electorally resurgent Liberal Democrats. The Conservative Party's 'decapitation strategy' of the Liberal Democrats in 2015 proved crucial for David Cameron in securing an overall majority at Westminster. Fast forward today and our results underline how the Conservative Party either crashing out with a 'no deal Brexit' or dithering on the terms of a 'Brexit deal' could further alienate traditional 'One Nation Tories' who may well conclude that the Liberal Democrats are their only viable alternative. The Liberal Democrats could potentially capture or recapture seats at the expense of the Conservative Party, thereby seriously damage the party's prospects of winning outright or being the largest party.
Labour also faces its own dilemma. Although strategic ambiguity on Brexit arguably served Labour well at the 2017 General Election, bringing the party its highest share of the vote since Tony Blair's second landslide, there is now a question mark about how viable the strategy of ambiguity is over the longer-term. Indeed, there is some evidence that voter's patience may be running out and if the party is not careful it risks being on the receiving end of a pincer movement, coming under much greater threat from the Brexit Party in its white working-class, less well educated, left behind heartlands while also losing its new support in places with lots of young people to the Liberal Democrats, a party that is offering an unambiguously pro-Remain position. At the 2017 general election Labour benefitted from an uneasy coalition between these different groups, managing to hold Hartlepool while making big advances in Hampstead and Kilburn, alongside the consolidation of votes from challengers like the Greens and Liberal Democrats. But whether this coalition holds, or whether voters decide to back a party which more closely represents their views on Brexit -or perhaps even abstain, is now highly uncertain. Whereas a clear move in either direction -be it getting behind a second referendum or getting on with Brexit -may stand to alienate one group of the voters, doing nothing and staying silent could end up alienating both.