Superdiversity and the Browning of Labour

Superdiversity across Europe has focused attention on the increasing significance of ethnic minorities to electoral outcomes. We use unique Origins software to analyse a sample of minority voters in the May 2014 European elections; drawing on the work of the Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES), we show that the growth of non‐White minorities will combine with a persistent preference for Labour to produce some unexpected consequences. We also compute the different ethnic penalties suffered by minority Labour and Conservative supporters, and demonstrate their likely trend between now and mid‐century. The analysis shows the increased importance of social and cultural factors in determining political preferences, and illustrates the way in which Big Data‐derived tools such as Origins can be used to produce fresh insights.