The women who hold the key to the next election

A new phrase joined the political lexicon just a few days ago – Stevenage Woman.

In 2019 it was said to be Workington Man that handed Boris Johnson a landslide. In 1997 it was Worcester Woman for Tony Blair.

We’ve had others – Mondeo Man always seemed the most abusive, we really didn’t like that guy.

In America they have Soccer moms and NASCAR dads.

Anyway, Labour Together, a think tank with close links to Keir Starmer, says Stevenage might be the most important site of the next general election. With the women in particular holding the upper hand.

Who is she? Well, a socially conservative mother who works full time, who is struggling with inflation and otherwise disillusioned by politics.

“Her attitudes are not dogmatic,” the report says. “She’s comfortable with immigration and thinks immigrants have benefited Britain economically and culturally but that doesn’t mean she supports open borders.”

Those are the generalities. Our Find Out Now poll this week aimed to go much deeper.

It is such a brilliant bit of kit it can specifically target actual women in Stevenage rather than just people the pollsters reckon are the same.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am not the clever bit.)

We asked 197 Women in Stevenage to give us a free-text response to: If you could choose anyone famous/well-known to be Prime Minister, who would that be?

After cleaning the answers for abuse, the top names were:

Martin Lewis: 32
David Attenborough: 9
Boris Johnson: 6
Hugh Grant: 6
Richard Branson: 6
Jeremy Clarkson: 4
Ricky Gervais: 4
Russell Brand: 3
Barack Obama: 3No woman had more than 2 mentions.Keir Starmer wasn’t mentioned once. Although, neither was Rishi Sunak.

Which suggests they both have work to do.

You can see the fuller results below.