Lecture 5 Voting Behaviour
The study of elections and voting behaviour is a relatively new academic discipline in the UK, the first proper elections study was begun in 1963 by David Butler and Donald Stokes. Their study of the 1964 General Election has subsequently followed in every general election since then.
Main Models For Consideration
- Party Identification Model and Social Class, (Butler and Stokes, 1964)
- Partisan and Class Dealignment, (Crewe & Sarlvik, 1979); Heath, Jowell and Curtice, (1983; 1987).
- Issue Voting-Rational Choice, (Himmelweit, 1985)
- The Radical Approach: Sectoral Cleavages and a Dominant Ideology, (Dunleavy & Husbands, 1985)
- The party identification and the importance of class
The notion of ‘party identification’ originated from the United States - Angus Campbell (The American Voter).
Attachment to ‘party’ is the decisive factor in the development of voting preferences. Elements of this approach are found in Butler and Stokes 1964 study of the election in that year.
Four elements to the model of party identification:
What is party identification?
This refers to the long term feelings of attachment that voters build up over a long period of time to a particular party
In Butler and Stokes first study over 90% expressed a preference for a particular party which led to the neglect of the remaining 10% of floating voters who were generally regarded as ignorant of political affairs.
How does it develop?
Much the same way as any other set of value development - through processes of social learning. Critical amongst these is the early home environment, as most voters in this model tend to inherit their political behaviour from their parents, especially if both are positively attached to one or other party.
This is where the importance of social class comes in. Party allegiance has tended to be more closely linked with social class than in most other western democracies.
So in this model we can put it fairly simply: a middle class household is far more likely to raise a Conservative voter, just as a working class household is more likely to produce a Labour voter.
In this respect a whole host of other social and physical environments come into play
Type of School - has a particular ethos and reinforced conceptions of social stratification.
Grammar - Secondary Modern; Comprehensive, Private or Public - different sets of expectations.
Workplace environment - the occupations that people found themselves in tended to reflect their educational and experiential development and this too reinforced conceptions of social class and political allegiance.
The Neighbourhood Effect - Where you live was also taken to be significant. For example a working class person living in a southern coastal retirement town was found to be more likely to be affected by ‘cross pressures’ i.e. a strongly conservative neighbourhood may be a conforming pressure.
What is the function of party identification?
Enables shorthand selection of political preferences. The model asserts that people are far to busy to think about policy decisions and preferences so the selectively interpret the information they receive to fit in with their already in place socialisation patterns.
Things that logically follow for British Politics (The Butler and Stokes Model)
- The Conservative and Labour parties were regarded as the principal recipients of partisan alignment.
- The country was effectively divided into middle class of non manual workers and a working class or manual workers.
- There was an obvious and logical connection between class and party.
- The liberal party (5.9% in 1959) though not ignored did not disrupt the two party, two class paradigm.
- Other social cleavages were important e.g. race, ethnicity, religion, gender or local political traditions, but did not disturb the general class based pattern of party identification.
Electoral Change: Partisan Dealignment and Class Dealignment.
Partisan Dealignment refers to the gradual weakening of those attached either to the Conservatives or to Labour; or rather two party decline.
Class Dealignment refers to the decline of class voting - to the weakening association between occupational class and voting for the Labour and Conservative parties.
Between 1945 and 1970 Britain closely resembled a pure two party system.
February 1974 the two party share of the vote fell from 89.5 % to 75.1%, this reflected a growing share of the vote for third parties (e.g. the Liberals and the Nationalists - Plaid Cymru and the SNP)
The 1979 election saw a return to something like normal, but subsequent elections have seen a gradual reduction in the two main parties’ share of the vote. In 1983, 1987, and 1992 this particularly affected the labour party.
Whether or not class dealignment has occurred or not is very dependent upon how we define class and is an area of much dispute.
You might want to spend some time looking into these definitions.
For the time being let’s look at two definitions of class dealignment. So, however we define class should class dealignment be occurring then we might expect to see one or more of the following.
Absolute Class Dealignment
This is the traditional way to define it. What we would expect to see on this view is labour’s share of the working class vote falling and the conservative share of the middle class vote falling. Further, we would expect to see middle class conservative and working class labour votes as a % of all votes falling.
In the 1950s and 1960s nearly two thirds of all classes voted for their natural class party. From 1970 there has been a sharp decline in class voting. 1983 and 1897 being the most obvious sources of non-class voting.
Associated with Crewe and Sarlvik, (1979) Decade of Dealignment
Relative Class Dealignment
Takes issue with the definitional criteria in the absolute model. Heath, Jowell and Curtice (1983) How Britain Votes argued that what really matters is whether a party’s support from a given class has changed relative to its support from other classes.
In their Analysis of the 1983 election they concluded that to see a proportion of each class that votes for its natural class party (like Crewe and Sarlvik) as a measure of class voting is misleading. This is because it runs the risk of confusing labour’s election defeats with a decline in class voting.
Class dealignment, they argue can only occur if ‘cross class’ voting increases with the two classes voting against their natural class party.
The Issue Voting and Rational Choice Model: Political Issues and Individual Choice.
In this view what becomes significant is not the blind allegiance to parties and a characterisation of the individual voter as uninformed, but the notion that voters are strongly influenced by issues and their personal lifestyle.
In this model the vote is used rationally as an instrument of choice in a political marketplace as a matter of self interest.
In other words the reason that working class voters vote for the conservatives is not because of deference but because a Tory government enables home ownership, taxes less, is perceived to be tough on law and order.
These choices are simply a reflection of selective benefits.
Hilda Himmelweit, et al (19) How Voters Decide
The Radical Approach: The Importance of Sectoral Cleavages and a Dominant Ideology.
Dunleavy & Husbands (1985) British Democracy at the Crossroads
Strongly critical of the other approaches as being too simplistic an account of what they perceive as the highly complex and multilayered nature of modern British society.
They argue that ‘sectoral cleavages’ and ‘interests and groups’ which are derived from ones position in the social structure and a ‘dominant ideology’ condition voting intentions.
- Attentive to the position of voters in the Labour market structure
- Attentive to Patterns of Consumption and Production
- Attentive to the power of the media, especially TV and Newspapers.