The Young Conservatives have warned the party that it must stop trying to appeal exclusively to older voters after it emerged that at the last election the average age at which a voter was more likely to vote Tories than Labour was 63.
Figures released after the election by YouGov show that the transition age for becoming a Tory voter has risen by 24 years since the 2019 election under Boris Johnson, when it was 39.
The most recent tipping point was 34 under David Cameron in the 2015 election. This rose to 47 under Theresa May in 2017 and reached 63 under Rishi Sunak after he announced policies such as the reintroduction of national service that were seen as a punishment for young people and presented few ideas to appeal to younger voters.
The Next Generation Tories group, which campaigns for the Conservatives to address the issues facing younger people, said the party needs “more working-age people, more policies for working-age people”.
“The Conservative Party must recognise that the deliberate strategy of attracting older voters at all costs laid the foundation for our defeat,” it said.
Mel Stride, candidate for the Conservative leadership, also pointed to the high average age of Tory voters. He said this was “unsustainable” and that the party needed to reposition itself across the electorate if it wanted to “make its voice heard”.
He told Times Radio: “We will do that through unity and we will do that by listening a lot, working hard and finding answers to a lot of fundamental and difficult questions. One of them is the fact that the average Conservative voter is 63 years old. That is completely untenable.”
Samuel Kasamu, a former adviser to 10 Downing Street, wrote on X: “The average age of Tory voters has risen by 24 years since the 2019 election. It is now 63, so the next leader has a lot of work to do.”
Some pre-election polls suggested that the transition age could rise above 70.
A post-election analysis by Focaldata found that the party retained less than half of its 40-60-year-old supporters from 2019.
