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Exclusive: Soaring renter population in key Tory seats could shape election

New research finds tally of Tory seats where more than a fifth of people are private tenants has tripled in a decade

By Ruby Lott-Lavigna
Exclusive: Soaring renter population in key Tory seats could shape election
Renters could have a big say in the next general election, where leaders of the two major parties, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, are set to battle it out | Hannah McKay/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
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Renters will have more of a say in key Tory seats at the next general election, according to new research that shows the number of private tenants booming across suburban areas and satellite towns.

Exclusive analysis shared with openDemocracy shows there are likely 77 Tory constituencies where private renters now make up a fifth of the population, up from 25 in 2011. The calculation is complicated by changing electoral boundaries in some seats – but researchers used ward-level data to estimate how the new seats would have voted had they existed in 2019.

In 2011, 22% of Tory constituencies in England had a fifth or more renters, according to Census data. This had risen to 40% in the 2021 survey.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0