Political Animals

The democratic and electoral case for stronger animal welfare policies in UK General Elections

A new report published on 12 June 2024 by Dr Steven McCulloch, Dr Lisa Riley and Professor Paul Chaney from Winchester and Cardiff Universities respectively finds that pledging to crackdown on animal cruelty could be a seat winning pledge in marginal constituencies. The report, titled ‘Political Animals’, analyses several national opinion polls, including constituency-level MRP polling. Among its key findings are that:

• Polling consistently demonstrates a supermajority level of British public support for significant reform of government animal welfare policies. There is high level majority support across political parties, nations, regions, demographics, and constituencies – including in key target seats for the 2024 general election.
• Nearly one third of respondents to a 2023 YouGov poll (33%) view animal welfare as one of their top three most important causes and Focaldata 2023 polling revealed that one in six (15.4%) ranked ‘whether or not a party will protect animals from cruelty’ as one of their top three most important policies that will influence which party they vote for. 
• Despite a supermajority of public support for progressive policies to prevent animal cruelty, voters’ expectations are insufficiently reflected in British political discourse, policy commitments and government policymaking.
• Recognising this citizen-governance gap and addressing it could make a difference to electoral chances in the 2024 general election. In the case of the Labour Party and Conservative Party’s top ten target seats, the number of voters who signed a sample of ten parliamentary animal welfare petitions from 2017-2019 was higher than the number of swing voters needed to win key marginal constituencies.