Landlords and the General Election: How might landlords vote?

Introduction

The General election is fast approaching. How are landlords deciding where their vote will be cast? Should the political parties be actively campaigning and trying to get the votes of landlords – or have landlords already decided?

The NRLA are interested not in who – party wise - landlords are voting for. But rather how important policies which will have an impact on the PRS weigh on the minds of landlords in deciding how to vote. 

Fieldwork

The data presented comes from the NRLA’s regular quarterly member consultation. The fieldwork was undertaken in Quarter 1 2024 during March and early April 2024.  

In total, 685 landlords took part in this research. All interviews were conducted on-line.

Have landlords decided who to vote for?

In the main, yes. However, many landlords are open to be persuaded. Chart 1 shows how NRLA members are thinking about their vote. For comparison we asked the same question as part of the NRLA’s recent ‘All-landlord survey’, which runs twice a year. 

For this wider all-landlord survey, polling company YouGov undertook the fieldwork. This fieldwork was also conducted in March 2024. (Note that 9% of this sample are members of the NRLA). For this survey, 1,002 landlords took part. 

From the above chart, there are two key points: 

1. Among NRLA members, as many landlords had either not fully made up their minds (19%) or were open to persuasion (27%) as had made up their minds (45%).
   • Although not directly comparable, a good estimate of "undecided" among the general public is currently around 16%. 
2. The wider landlord community were much more certain than NRLA members for whom they would be voting – over half (54%) stated they had definitely decided for whom they were voting.    

Which policy areas do landlords prioritise?

The NRLA asked landlords what key policy areas would determine how they would vote. Each landlord selected upto three key policy areas or other voting determinants which they felt were important. Note the question specified "...other than the PRS".

The chart below shows the “top 10 policies” which will influence landlords. By coincidence, these were also all policy areas which were identified as “key” by more than 10% of landlords. 

The chart above shows the following issues dominate landlord-voter thinking:

1. Economy/economic competence
2. Health/NHS
3. Taxation

These three issues are by some distance ahead of immigration with other policy areas tailing off in importance. 

A couple of points to note:

• Fewer than 5% of landlords (4%) stated “party loyalty” was a factor in deciding for whom to vote.
• Younger landlords (of working age) were more concerned with cost-of-living taxation and education. 
  • Older landlords meanwhile are more concerned with law & order, defence and immigration. 

To compare findings with the wider population, the YouGov policy issue tracker for the period when this landlord fieldwork was undertaken provides a useful benchmark. The key observation is that the views and policy priorities of the landlord community is not dissimilar to that of the wider voting population: 

• The broader YouGov population tracker, “The economy” and “Health” also came out first and second in the list of key voter issues. 
• In the same YouGov polling (which also uses the “select three policies” method), immigration (37%) was more frequently cited as a key issue when compared to NRLA member polling (27% of NRLA members selected this issue).

Finally, note that “Housing policy” was selected by similar proportions of participants in the NRLA landlord poll and the wider voter policy tracker – 25% of the broader YouGov poll cited housing and 20% of NRLA members.

The importance of PRS policies in landlord voting decisions

Landlords were asked whether policies towards the PRS specifically would be influential when deciding where their vote would be cast.

The fieldwork took place before the election was even announced, let alone the manifestos were published. However, both the Renters’ Reform Bill (RRB) and the reaction to it did provide some information about the likely priorities of the main parties:

The chart shows how influential a clear PRS policy could be in persuading landlords to support a particular party.

• More than half of all landlords would be “extremely” or “very” influenced by the PRS policies put forward during the campaign.  

Note too that:  

• 50% of those who have already firmly decided were influenced by PRS-policies.
  • In comparison, larger proportions - 58% - of those “completely undecided” and 53% of those “open to having their mind changed” are up for being swayed by a positive set of PRS policies. 

Summary

The NRLA polling shows that landlords are a constituency whose votes were very much up-for-grabs in what turned out to be the run-up to the General Election. Whilst landlords have no specific or unique policy preferences which makes them distinct from other voters, a substantial portion will be swayed by the policies political parties adopt towards the Private Rented Sector.

Landlords are a relatively small constituency – numbering probably between 1.25-2.5m voters across the UK – and they are also dispersed across the country.  

However, when compiling their manifestos, political parties should reflect on their PRS policies: (i) because over a million potential votes  are not to be sniffed at and (ii) maintaining the confidence of landlords post-election will be an important part of addressing the housing brief whoever forms the next government.