January 2015
The migrant electorate will be a crucial constituency in the 2015 election. Around one voter in every ten eligible to vote in 2015 will be a migrant voter, and many more will be the children of migrants.
This briefing intends to provide the latest analysis of migrant voters in England and Wales, and to consider their potential impact in the general election 2015.
The first purpose of this briefing is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the likely size of the migrant electorate in England and Wales in 2015, using data from the 2001 and 2011 Censuses to project estimates of the overall migrant population in each parliamentary constituency. We then make use of information about the naturalisation rates of different migrant groups derived from Office for National Statistics analysis of Census data to estimate the likely migrant electorate in each seat.