Labour lost Sun readers' support in 2008

The Sun's decision to switch its support to the Conservatives (announced today) is actually a reflection of a decision already taken by the newspaper's readers, as newly-published data from Ipsos shows.

The Conservatives now have a convincing lead among regular readers of the Sun: Ipsos's aggregate political data from January to September 2009 shows that 42% would vote Conservative, compared to only 29% who would support the Labour Party.

Although this means that Sun readers are still a little more likely to support Gordon Brown's government than are the public as a whole, they have swung more heavily to the Conservatives than the rest of the public since the 2005 general election - the public as a whole has swung from Labour to the Conservatives by 9 points since 2005, while Sun readers have swung to the Conservatives by 12.5 points. At the 2005 general election 45% of Sun readers voted for Labour, while only a third (33%) of them voted for the Conservatives. However, the shift in votes has not simply been from Labour to Conservatives; just one in ten (10%) Sun readers voted for a party other than the `big three' compared with 17% who say they would do so now. Labour held a lead over the Tories until 2008 when the political tide began to shift towards the Conservatives and Sun readers, as did the public as a whole, swung towards David Cameron's party.

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• Download the full computer tables160

Technical Details

For the Political Monitor, Ipsos interviewed a representative sample of c.1,000 adults aged 18+ across Great Britain every month. Interviews were conducted by telephone. Data are weighted to match the profile of the population.

Voting intention figures exclude those who say they would not vote, are undecided or refuse to name a party and those who are not absolutely certain to vote. Where percentages do not sum to 100, this may be due to computer rounding, the exclusion of "don't know" categories, or multiple answers.

The 2005 data comes from the MORI Election Aggregate (weighted to final results) based on 15,948 interviews (conducted both by telephone and face-to-face) with GB adults aged 18+ between April and May 2005.