Older, fed up, working class and male? Then Nigel is your man

UKIP and its leader have turned Britain into a four-party state- at least in the media. But who are they? Crunching more than 12,000 interviews over the past year, and including analysis of data from last week's council elections, some key patterns stand out. UKIP voters are much more likely to...

...BE MEN

Some 63% of UKIP's voters in our last year of polling have been men,com173pared with 50% of Conservative voters and 48% of Labour voters. Does Nigel Farage's "ordinary bloke in the pub" persona work - and particularly for men? Some 43% say they are satisfied with his performance, compared with 26% of women. The figures for other parties are more balanced. Overall, Farage and Ed Miliband each have 34% of voters who say they are happy with their performance, just above David Cameron's 32%. But when you look at the gender split, Miliband has equal numbers of men and women happy with his performance (34% each), com173pared with a 17-point gap for Farage.

...LOVE THEIR LEADER

Some 91% of UKIP voters say they are happy with Nigel Farage's perform173ance.Among Lib Dems, Clegg scores 37%, while Miliband rates 52% with Labour voters and Cameron 71% with Conservative voters. Farage's main strength, however, is not his popularity among the electorate as a whole - he has the same level of national satisfac173tion (34%) as Miliband - but rather that as many as four in 10 people have yet to decide about him. Only 26% are dissat173isfied with him, compared with 50% for Miliband and 60% for Cameron - four out of 10 voters say they don't know him well enough to judge.

...BE OLDER

UKIP voters have the oldest age profile of any party's supporters: 60% are over 55, which particularly helps them in low-turnout elections such as last week's, when only 31% voted. Older people are much more likely to vote than the under-35s.

...BE WORKING CLASS

Some 50% of UKIP supporters are working class (44% in Britain as a whole), compared with 33% of Conservative voters.

...BE EX-TORIES

They are people who have voted for all three main parties in the past, although they are more likely to be ex-Conservative voters.About 14% of people who voted Conservative in 2010 now say they will vote UKIP, compared with 8% who voted Lib Dem and 6% of Labour backers.

...LIVE IN THE MIDLANDS

The elections last week helped them because they took place in parts of the UK that have more of their supporters. Their vote is strongest in the English Midlands and the south/south-east. This highlights their appeal as an anti173 London political establishment choice.

...BE FED UP

UKIP voters are more dissatisfied with everyone - the government, Cameron, Miliband, and Clegg - than voters are as a whole.

...WORRY ABOUT EUROPE

Not really surprising, but it is impor173tant to note that they are even more worried about the economy (59%) and immigration (51%) than voters as a whole (49% and 31% respectively).

Ben Page is Chief Executive of Ipsos and wrote this article for The Observer.