Thanks to the media interest in his election as leader of the Green party of England and Wales, there’s now plenty of information available about Zack Polanski, the so-called “eco-populist” who won a landslide victory over his arguably more moderate rivals.
But what do we know about the nearly 65,000 grassroots members who gave Polanski an overwhelming 85% of the vote, albeit on a turnout of just 38%? A survey we conducted of party members following the 2024 election sheds light on why he won so convincingly. It also gives us some idea of how easy Polanski will find it to achieve his goal of moving the party in a more radical, left-liberal direction.
As part of the Party Members Project, we’ve surveyed members of the country’s five most popular nationwide parties, including 732 people who belonged to the Greens.
The Greens had easily the most gender-balanced membership, coming in at a satisfyingly precise 50:50. However, in common with those of other parties, Green members are no spring chickens: fewer than one in 20 were in the 18-24 age group. The rest were evenly spread across the 25-49, 50-64 and 65+ groups.
And, like most other parties (Reform UK being a partial – but only a partial – exception) Green members are overwhelmingly middle class. Indeed, to use a commonly employed classification, some 83% of Green members we surveyed were ABC1s – meaning they come from one of the three higher (and generally better-off) social grades.
Geographically, they are rather more likely than the population as a whole to live in London, the south and the east of England rather than in the north or the Midlands.
How leftwing are Green members?
In terms of attitudes and values, some 88% of Green members voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum compared to just 5% who plumped for Leave. And when asked whether “the government should increase taxes and spend more on public services or cut taxes and spend less on public services?” agreement with the first option was near universal at 96%. This beats even the 89% of Labour and Lib Dem members who said the same.
When asked to place themselves on a left-right scale, some 27% of Green members labelled themselves “very left wing”, with 54% picking “fairly left wing” and 16% going for “slightly left wing”. This again suggests the Greens’ grassroots stand somewhere to the left of Labour’s membership.
More broadly, Green members are clearly at the far end of what political scientists sometimes refer to as the green alternative libertarian v traditional authoritarian nationalist, GAL-TAN scale. This appears, these days, to be as if not more important than its left-right equivalent.
Predictably enough, some 98% of Green members supported cutting emissions to get to net zero. On immigration only 18% thought it had been too high over the last decade, with 29% thinking it had actually been too low and 41% “about right”. Eight out of ten disagreed with the notion that men and women had different roles in society, and three quarters said they weren’t proud of this country’s history.
Were we betting people, then, all the above would have led us to put a fair bit of our spare cash on Polanski to win the Green party leadership – and to do so fairly easily. Our findings suggest, too, that he’ll have considerable support in his bid to take the party in a more radical direction.
We also, incidentally, asked party members what qualities they thought it important for a leader to possess, getting them to pick their top three from a list we gave them. For the Greens, having “a strong moral compass” came in at number one, selected by two thirds of members.
Second was being “a good communicator”, picked by just over half. Number three on their list, mentioned by just under half of Green members, was “the ability to empathise with others”.
Reading the portraits of him published since his big win, and judging by his media appearances both during and after the contest, Polanski would appear to be just the kind of leader the Green grassroots is looking for. Whether that’s also true of voters remains to be seen.
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Tim Bale has received funding from the ESRC and Research England (via QMUL) to conduct research on party members.
Paul Webb has previously received funding from the ESRC to conduct research on political parties.
Stavroula Chrona does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
