The Vulnerability Vote

The most recent local elections looked like a clear win for Reform UK. For many, the party is the frontrunner for the next general election. Beyond the headline numbers on voting intention, though, the results are also a testbed to see what is really driving voter behaviour.

Over the last seven years, the team at Nepean has been working with Lowell to bring its extraordinary consumer data and insights to policymakers to uncover hidden drivers of political behaviour, help inform their decision making and drive change for UK consumers in debt. 

That work has included the construction of Lowell’s Financial Vulnerability Index (FVI), bringing together proprietary consumer data from 8.5m UK customers to understand the financial health - levels of savings, spending, arrears, debt default, state support, credit usage, as well as attitudes to personal finance - of different areas of the UK. 

Recently, work on the FVI has appeared to track an inexorable rise in financial vulnerability in the UK, before, through and beyond recent cost-of-living pressures. It seems, as a nation, over the long term, our financial health is simply getting worse. We are less well-off and less stable. 

That has coincided with the growth of alternative parties and the recent fragmentation of voting intention. This initial paper - analysing the recent 2026 local election result against Lowell’s FVI and proprietary research conducted by Opinium - is intended as a first step to explore the relationship between financial health and political behaviour. It raises the important question: is financial vulnerability driving political fragmentation?

Read the full report here.