Labour leadership: Jeremy Corbyn’s support stronger outside London, YouGov survey suggests
Poll finds the Labour leader romped home in the north of England, although his challenger Owen Smith ‘won’ in Scotland
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Your support makes all the difference.Women and Labour members outside London were the key to Jeremy Corbyn’s thumping victory, an exit poll has suggested.
No official breakdown of the results by age or geography was released by party officials, who insisted such detailed statistics were not available.
However, a YouGov poll of just over 1,000 members offered strong clues to explain the outcome – and contained an even more terrifying portent for the defeated Labour centrists.
The survey found that women were the bedrock of Mr Corbyn’s fresh success, with almost two-thirds of female members giving him their vote.
Intriguingly, despite the repeated claim that the leader’s heartland is London, his margin of victory in the capital was quite narrow, at 53 per cent to 47 per cent.
And Mr Smith actually “won” Scotland, according to YouGov, securing 58 per cent of the vote – his best result in any part of the country.
But Mr Corbyn romped home in the north of England (64 per cent), the Midlands and Wales (61 per cent) and the rest of the south (59 per cent).
Another perhaps surprising finding of the exit poll was that Mr Smith won among 18- to 24-year-olds – a group often thought of as strong Corbynites – but they made up only 11 per cent of the electorate anyway.
And Mr Corbyn won with big margins among 25- to 39-year-olds (63 per cent to 36 per cent) and 40- to 50-year-olds (62 per cent to 37 per cent), who voted in far larger numbers.
The poll had a reasonable stamp of authority because it predicted that Corbyn would win by 59 per cent, reasonably close to the 61.8 per cent he actually scored.
And that miserable signpost for those Labour MPs who may still harbour dreams of unseating Mr Corbyn in a “war of attrition” threatened by some? YouGov found that Mr Smith had the backing of a clear majority – close to two-thirds – of Labour members who joined up before the party’s general election defeat last year. But Mr Corbyn’s rock-solid appeal to newer members was crystal clear, as he grabbed the support of almost three-quarters of those who signed up during last year’s contest.
Crucially, there are already 130,000 further new recruits waiting in the wings if there is another leadership challenge – those denied the vote this time, because they joined after January this year.
Mr Corbyn’s grip on his party looks unshakeable.
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