Seventy seven per cent of British Jews intend to vote for the Conservatives, polling by The Jewish Chronicle and research agency Survation has revealed.
On the other hand, only 13% of British Jews intend to vote for Labour in the June 8 election. The Liberal Democrats polled at 7%, while 2% said they would vote for parties outside the main three.
Although no accurate polling has been done on British Muslim voting intentions, it’s widely believed that most Muslims will vote Labour. A poll on the 5Pillars website currently indicates that 57% of Muslims will vote Labour, 21% won’t vote at all, 14% will vote Conservative, 5% will vote Lib Dem and 2% will vote SNP.
The overwhelming support for the Conservative Party among British Jews comes at end of a year-long period that has seen repeated accusations of anti-semitism leveled against Labour, which the party denies.
Of the group of 515 British Jews polled last week, when asked to rank the parties on a scale of 1 to 5 if they have an anti-semitism problem, those surveyed gave Labour 3.94. In second place was the UK Independence Party with 3.63, with the Liberal Democrats at 2.7 and the Conservatives at 1.96.
Chris Hopkins, senior project manager at Survation, told The Jerusalem Post that the poll reflects an ongoing trend of declining Jewish support for Labour, which was evident in the 2015 election.
“Labour and Conservative support has changed in our Jewish polling over the last two years” he said. “But I wouldn’t describe any of the changes as surprising. Even in April 2015, when it appeared Ed Miliband was heading for No. 10 and Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t a factor in front-line Labour politics, the party was only receiving 22% of the vote in our Jewish polling, with more than two-thirds of respondents planning to vote Conservative.”
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