It’s official (sort of): Santa Claus would vote Green. Almost a third of voters think that Father Christmas is a left-wing progressive who would support Zack Polanski’s party if there was a general election tomorrow, a poll by YouGov has found.
Even 20 per cent of Labour voters thought Santa was more likely to throw his support behind the Greens than vote for a second term in office for Sir Keir Starmer.
YouGov questioned more than 2,000 voters and asked them to imagine how Father Christmas would vote at the next general election. And while many people believed Santa would follow their own political beliefs, it was far from universal.
Among Conservative voters, 27 per cent thought Santa had faith in Kemi Badenoch and would vote Tory — compared with 32 per cent who thought he would simply stay at home in Lapland.
Reform UK voters were more convinced that Santa was secretly worried about migration. Nearly half thought he would vote for Nigel Farage’s party — and none of them thought he would vote for Labour. But even they had a sneaking suspicion that Santa was a lefty, with 4 per cent saying he would vote Green.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, voters were also asked who Ebenezer Scrooge might favour. And here the result was even clearer.
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A third said he was clearly a supporter of Farage — including nearly a quarter of Reform’s own supporters. Twenty per cent said he would vote Conservative, including 15 per cent of Tory supporters, while 14 per cent said he would be drawn to Labour — perhaps attracted to Starmer’s thwarted attempts to cut benefits.
The poll was commissioned by the British political scientist Professor Philip Cowley for The House, the magazine for MPs and peers.
He said that while such polls were fun, the answers to the questions could often reveal something about the minds of voters.
“The US pollster John Zogby famously asked voters if they lived in the land of Oz whether they would vote for Tin Man, who’s all brains and no heart, or the Scarecrow, who’s all heart and no brains,” he said.
“Zogby claimed this allowed him to see what voters wanted, freed from their perceptions of individual candidates or parties and I think there is something in this.
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“What you see from this poll is that there are two things going on. The first is that voters tend to think ‘good’ characters would do the same thing they would do.
“That is why you find most Tory or Reform voters thinking that Santa would vote for their party. But at the same time even some of these voters thought that Santa would vote Green — and that is why, ultimately, the Greens come out on top when you aggregate it out across the electorate.
“That must tell you something about the party’s image.”
