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The Analysis of Voting Behaviour in Great Britain [Some of the data in this document refer to voting behaviour in the UK but  most of the analysis applies to Great Britain and I have given no consideration to voting behaviour in Northern Ireland]

Document last edited: 29/01/2012

Part A: Electoral Stability, Party Identification and Social Class Voting: 1945-1970

Page last edited::29/01/2012 [ New information on non-class influences on voting behaviour in the 2010 General Election has been added to Part B of this document in January 2012]

New: Click here for a new assignment on patterns of social class voting between 1992 and 2010.

Newest: Click here for Document Four: The UK General Election of 2010   [Now available...from 29/01/2012]

:

 

My Voting Behaviour documents have now been restructured, updated and revised. The original version of this document has been divided into two sections with some further revisions in January 2012 and  the original document on the 1970s to the 1990s has been divided into two sections and revised quite significantly in an effort to clarify the differences between the various models of voting behaviour developed from the 1970s to the 1990s. The third document on the General Elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005 will soon be extended modified to include comparative information on the 2010 General Election which will be extracted from my new fourth document on the 2010 General Election. Thus the new structure of voting behaviour documents is as  follows:

 

  • Document One : The Analysis of Voting Behaviour in Great Britain

  1. Part A: The Analysis of Voting Behaviour in Great Britain: Electoral Stability, Party Identification and Social Class 1945-1970

  2. Part B: Non-Class Influences on Voting Behaviour 1945-2010 [Some information on the 2010 General Election has been added in January 2012]

  1. Part A: Models of Voting Behaviour

  2. Part B: The General Elections of 1992 and 1997

 

The original PowerPoint Presentations will not be altered but I have added  links to  IPSOS MORI and BES PDF Slide Presentations on the 2010 General Election both of which are infinitely superior to anything that I could produce myself.

  1.  Click here for a PowerPoint on Document One

  2. Click here for a  PowerPoint on Models of Voting Behaviour

  3. Click here for a  PowerPoint on the Social Influences on Voting and Non-Voting

  4. Click here for a  PowerPoint on the General Elections of 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005

  5. Click here for  IPSOS MORI Slide Presentation on the 2010 General Election .[EXCEPTIONAL]

  6. Click here for an equally EXCEPTIONAL Slide Presentation on the 2010 General Election from the BES Team. 

  7. Click here for yet another EXCEPTIONAL Presentation on the 2010 General Election from Dr. Justin Greaves of Warwick University

  8. Click here for 2010 General Election Links Page

  9. Click here for YouTube: 60 Interesting Video Clips!

 

 

 

Document One :Learning Objectives

  • Recognition of the UK context of voting behaviour  1945-1970.
  • Understanding of  the core elements of the Party Identification Model of Voting Behaviour..
  • Appreciation of some of the detailed findings of  Butler and Stokes' "Political Change in Britain".
  • Detailed understanding of relationships between voting behaviour and social class 1945-1970.
  • Deviant Voters: Middle Class Labour Voters and Working Class Conservative Voters
  • Recognition that voting behaviour is correlated also with the following social variables:
  • Age.
  • Gender
  • Region
  • Religion
  • Ethnicity
  • Recognition of relationships between these variables and social class

Document Assignment [Click below for links to the relevant sections of the notes]

1. Why has the period between 1945-1970 in the UK been described as a period of relative electoral stability?

2.Explain the nature of the party identification model of voting behaviour. You should use the following phrases:  objective and subjective social class,, partisan self-image or party identification, political issues and party policies, party images, social class differences in political socialisation.

3.How has social class traditionally been measured in studies of voting behaviour?

4.How were the usual relationships between social class and voting behaviour explained in the party identification model?

5.What was deviant voting? How would you explain middle class support for the Labour Party? What early explanations were given for working class support for the Conservative Party?

6 Voting behaviour has traditionally been linked with social class, age, gender, ethnicity, region and religion. What was P.G.J.. Pulzer's view about the relative significance of the above mentioned factors influencing voting behaviour?

7.Briefly explain how any three  of these non- class  variables affect voting behaviour .

 

 

 

wpe1.jpg (71286 bytes)

 

  1. Click here for BBC coverage of General Elections 1945-1997

  2. Click here for the BBC's coverage of the 2001 General Election Results 

  3.  Click here for the BBC's coverage of the 2005 General Election Results

  4. Click here for IPSOS MORI General Election Data 1974-2005

  5. . Click here for IPSOS MORI 2005 General Election Data

 

The analysis of voting behaviour is known also as "psephology" deriving from the Greek "psephos" [a pebble] with which the ancient Athenians indicated their voting decisions. Psephologists in the UK distinguish between the period  of 1945-1970 which they characterise as the era of electoral stability, two party dominance, party identification and class alignment  and the period from 1970 to the present day which is described as the era of declining party identification/partisan dealignment and class dealignment although there are also important arguments as to whether the general elections of 1997 and 2001 ushered in a realignment of UK voting behaviour.

In this document I shall focus especially on the ways in which the party identification model of voting behaviour was used in Butler and Stokes' "Political Change in Britain" [1969: second edition 1974] to explain relationships between social class and voting behaviour between 1945 and 1970.Working class voters and middle class voters were shown to vote mainly for the Labour and Conservative parties respectively although there were also significant percentages of deviant voters who did not vote predictably according to their social class. My discussion of "Political Change in Britain" may strike beginning students as a bit "long winded" but I do believe that an early appreciation of the significance of this model will pay dividends later when students begin to study the subsequent processes of partisan dealignment and class dealignment.

In the period 1945-1970 there were also observable correlations between voting behaviour and age, gender, region, religion and ethnicity. I discuss briefly the reasons for these correlations and also reproduce IPSOS MORI data on these correlations for the General Elections Oct 1974-2005 in the hope that students will find it useful to have this data "all in one place".

Let us begin with a broad consideration of the period of 1945-1970 which has been described as a period of relative electoral stability dominated by the two major political parties: the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. Thus between 1945-1970 the Conservative and Labour Parties regularly gained approximately 90% of the votes cast in general elections which under the conditions of the "first past the post" electoral system translated into approximately 98% of the parliamentary seats while the Ulster Unionist Party [UUP] gained a further 10-12 seats and could be relied upon to regularly support the Conservative Party in parliament. Neither the Liberal Party nor the Nationalist parties offered any real challenge to this 2 Party dominance. Further aspects of electoral stability were that opinion poll fluctuations and by election swings were relatively narrow and surveys indicated that relatively few voters switched their party allegiance between general elections although more switched between voting and non- voting. The relative stability of opinion polls suggested that most voters were  influenced far less by short term political issues than by long term social structural factors to be discussed below and variations in general election results could be said to be determined by the relatively small percentages of so-called floating voters who did switch party allegiance between general elections.

Psephologists at the time demonstrated that voting behaviour was clearly correlated with a range of social variables including social class, age, gender, region, religion and "race" or ethnicity and that social class was the most significant influence on voting behaviour which enabled P.G.J. Pulzer to write in Political Representation and Election (1967) that "Class is the basis of British party policies: all else is embellishment and detail",  a conclusion which was endorsed fully by David Butler and Donald Stokes in their famous study "Political Change in Britain [1969: second edition 1974].

These patterns of voting behaviour and in particular the relationships between social class and voting behaviour were explained in terms of the so-called Party Identification Model of voting behaviour which originated in the electoral research conducted in the 1940s and 1950s at the University of Michigan and was refined further in Butler and Stokes' Political Change in Britain. This is a long detailed and complex study and I can aim here only to outline the core elements of its model of party identification and in particular its analysis of relationships between voting behaviour and social class.

These main elements can be stated as follows.

The following first three tables have been slightly adapted from Political Change in Britain .

Table 1

Class-self-image by occupational head of household 1963 [=Objective social class position]
Self-assigned social class position [= subjective social class position] Higher Managerial [1] Lower Managerial[ 2] Supervisory non-manual [3] Lower non -manual [4] Skilled manual [5] Unskilled manual [6] Residual, on pension or other

state benefits [7] [omitted]

Middle Class 78% 65% 60% 32% 17% 9%  
Working Class 22% 35% 40% 68% 83% 91%  

Table 2

Objective Social Class Position as measured by modified I.O.M. scale 1963
Party Identification Higher managerial[1] Lower managerial [2] Supervisory non -manual[3] Lower non-manual[4] Skilled manual [5] Unskilled manual [6] Residual[7]
Conservative 86 81 77 61 29 25  
Labour 14 19 23 9 71 75  

 

Table 3

Party support by class self-image
  Middle Class self image Working class self image
Partisan self-image [i.e. party identification] = Conservative 79 29
Partisan self-image [i.e. party identification]  =Labour 21 72

 

 

Voting Behaviour and Social Class in Selected General Elections [Great Britain]

  1951   1964   1966   1983  
  non-manual manual non-manual manual non-manual manual non-manual manual
Con 75 34 62 28 60 25 55 35
Lib 3 3 16 8 14 6 28 22
Lab 22 63 22 64 26 69 17 42

 

 

But why did so many voters vote in accordance with their social class position between 1945-1970?

 

 

Given their relatively large numbers if all  working class voters had voted Labour between 1945 and 1970 Labour would have won every single general election. However a substantial minority of working class voters voted Tory, and also a smaller, but still substantial minority of middle class  voters voted Labour, even at the high point of class voting in the General Elections of 1950 and 1951. These cross-class voters, given their relatively small numbers, were  described as "deviant" voters. Why did they vote "deviantly"?

Working Class Conservative Voters : An Introduction

Early explanations (for example that of Bagehot) of working class Conservatism had stressed the importance of deference, and in their study "Angels in Marble", Mackenzie and Silver claimed that in the early60's approximately 50% of working class support for the Conservative Party could indeed  explained in terms of deference, with such voters to be found mainly in agricultural areas and small towns, working in small scale industries with relatively close paternalistic relationships with  their employers, having limited opportunities for the development of working class consciousness, and perceiving the inequalities of the social  order as essentially just and meritocratic. Another grouping of secular working class  Conservatives was also noted; these voters were mainly young, male, relatively well-paid, voiced  limited support for the Trade Union movement, the Welfare State and nationalisation and  essentially supported the principles of private enterprise. They were more pragmatic in their voting behaviour than the deferentials and more likely than the deferentials to switch their support away from the Tories.

As a response to Labour's three successive defeats in the General Elections of 1951, 1955, and 1959 it was widely argued that this may have been due to changes in the nature of the working class with rising working class  affluence leading to an increased likelihood of secular working class Conservative voting. However this line of argument was undermined by the Goldthorpe-Lockwood critique of  the Embourgeoisement theory (The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure.1969) which found  affluent manual workers had been more  likely than the working class as a whole to support Labour in the General election of 1959 .Nevertheless  the support of these affluent workers for the Labour Party was shown to be very fickle, and potentially  volatile suggesting that more and more working class voters might  desert the Labour Party in the future.

The analysis of working class conservatism can be extended in the following document when we consider the more recent  trends in voting behaviour and the new theories of voting behaviour which were developed in response to these trends.

Middle Class Labour voters: An Introduction

Possible factors encouraging middle class voters to vote Labour include the following:

 Many current members of the middle class may have grown up in the working class The Goldthorpe Social Mobility study entitled Social Mobility and Class Structure [1987 ]t demonstrated that rates of absolute  upward social  mobility were considerable such that many current members of the middle class come from a working class background where the powerful process of political socialisation may cause them to continue to identify with and to vote for the Labour Party.

They may have been radicalised via academic study and/or by their work in the institutions of the welfare state, seeing the effects of social inequality at first hand, and believing the Labour party are most likely to defend the welfare state as suggested for example by Frank Parkin in his study of middleclass radicalism [1968] Notice that this suggests  that middle class voters working in state institutions are  more likely than middle class voters working in private enterprise, to vote Labour and as we shall see, in the following document  this is indeed the case to some extent.

Later models of voting behaviour give more emphasis to the effects of political issues and party policies on voting behaviour. Some middle class voters in the 1960s may have supported strongly Labour's liberal social reforms in areas such as divorce, abortion and gay rights or in some cases  Labour's unilateralist  nuclear disarmament policies proposed in the  General Elections of 1983 and1987.   

Again the analysis of middle class support for the Labour Party be extended in subsequent documents when we consider the more recent  trends in voting behaviour and the new theories of voting behaviour which were developed in response to these trends. Meanwhile in the next document let us turn to the effects of Age, Gender, Ethnicity, Region and Religion on voting behaviour. 

End of Document One Part A; Electoral Stability, Party Identification and Social Class

 

 

[In Part B  I consider  the effects of other social influences on voting behaviour in the era of party identification [1945-1970] but for convenience I have also included information on the more recent effects of these social influences. This information has been extracted from the IPSOS MORI document  on Social Influences on Voting Behaviour October-1974-2010 , from various Parliamentary Research Briefs , and from  Ipsos Mori and BES research studies on ethnicity and voting behaviour. I also  provide a link to the most recent IPSOS MORI data on social influences on voting hehaviour in the 2010 General Election]

Although we can agree with the already mentioned statement from P.G.J. Pulzer in Political Representation and Election (1967) that in relation to the period between 1945 and 1970  "Class is the basis of British party policies: all else is embellishment and detail", it is also necessary to investigate the effects of other social factors [ age, gender, region, religion and ethnicity] on voting behaviour in the period 1945-1970. In several cases we shall find important connections between these variables and the more significant variable social class variable and these interconnections provide further support for P.G.J. Pulzer's statement.

Electoral data from 1945 -1970 suggested that older voters were more likely than younger voters to vote Conservative and less likely than younger voters to vote Labour. This was often explained by the notion that as individuals grow older they become more set in their ways, more wedded to traditional values and attitudes and more likely to believe that Conservative governments are more likely to safeguard their financial and personal security which appear increasingly important in later life. However  Butler and Stokes [and other psephologists] explained the relationship between age and voting behaviour in terms of the different processes of political socialisation affecting successive generations. Thus people born in say 1900 would have grown up before a powerful Labour Party existed and might as a result have been socialised to vote Conservative or Liberal rather than Labour. By comparison people born in say 1930 would have been reaching adulthood at the time of the reforming Labour Governments of 1945-51 and may have experienced processes of political socialisation which encouraged them to vote Labour in the 1950s and 1960s when they were still relatively young. and there was also the possibility that even in old age  these voters might still be more likely to vote Labour than previous generations of older voters.

This line of thought leads on to further speculations. Would voters who grew to adulthood in the "swinging" radical 60s be especially likely to vote Labour when young and more likely than previous generations to continue to vote Labour even as they grew older?  How would growing up in the era of Thatcherism affect voting behaviour in the future and so on? Unfortunately it is difficult to answer such questions but at least the following IPSOS MORI data illustrate relationships between age and voting behaviour between Oct. 1974 and 2005. The data do indeed show that broadly speaking older voters are less likely to vote Labour and more likely to vote Conservative than younger voters although there is not an absolutely perfect correlation between age and voting behaviour. particularly in the 2001 General Election.

                                                                                                             OCT 1974               1979                   1983                    1987                   1992                  1997                2001               2005
18-24
Conservative 24 42 42 37 35 27 27 28
Labour 42 41 33 39 38 49 41 38
Lib / Alliance / LD 27 12 23 22 19 16 24 26
Con lead -18 +1 +9 -2 -3 -22 -14 -10
25-34
Conservative 33 43 40 39 40 28 24 25
Labour 38 38 29 33 37 49 51 38
Lib / Alliance / LD 24 15 29 26 18 16 19 27
Con lead -5 +5 +11 +6 +3 -21 -27 -13
35-54
Conservative 34 46 44 45 43 30 30 27
Labour 42 35 27 29 34 45 43 41
Lib / Alliance / LD 20 16 27 24 19 19 20 23
Con lead -8 +11 +17 +16 +9 -15 -13 -14
55+
Conservative 42 47 47 46 46 36 39 40
Labour 40 38 27 31 34 40 38 34
Lib / Alliance / LD 14 13 24 21 17 17 17 20
Con lead +2 +9 +20 +15 +12 -4 +1 +7
 
  1. The 2010 data do illustrate that , broadly speaking, the likelihood of voting Conservative increased with age: 30% of voters aged 18- 24 voted Conservative compared with 44% of voters 65+.

  2. In the 2010 the likelihood of voting Labour varied only slightly with age but, interestingly, young people were considerably more likely to vote Liberal Democrat than voters aged 55+.

  3. The Liberal Democrat vote increased most among 18-24 year old voters and particularly among 18-24 year old women.

  4. The national swing from Labour to Conservative was %5 but considerably higher among 25-34 year olds [ 9.0%] and 35-44 year olds [8.5%]

  5. There were also very significant age differences in turnout in 2010.

  6. Click here for IPSOS MORI 2010 data{ for further information.]

 

  • Gender and Voting Behaviour

It has been traditionally argued that women were more likely than men to vote Conservative and less likely than men to vote Labour. The overall size of the gender gap  is measured by the difference between the percentage Conservative-Labour lead among women and the percentage Conservative-Labour lead among men. and , on this basis the gender gap  in voting behaviour  was sometimes substantial between 1945 and 1970 reaching highs of -17 % in 1950 and 1951. These data were usually explained by theories that for much of the C20th, women were less likely to be in paid employment  and less likely to be trade union members or because women were seen as possibly more  "traditional" or  more "deferential" than men in their views as a result gender differences in socialisation or because women, on average, live longer than men and as seen above, age is correlated with Conservative voting.

We may use the following recent IPSOS MORI opinion poll data to clarify the calculation of the gender gap statistic and to assess whether traditional gender differences in voting behaviour have been maintained in recent years. On the basis of these data the traditional negative gender gap was substantial in 1974 [Oct], 1979 and 1983 but relatively smaller  between 1987 and 2001 while in 2005 women were both less likely to vote Conservative and more likely to vote Labour than men thus reversing the traditional gender gap and generating instead a positive gender gap. This reversal of the traditional gender gap continued in 2010 according to the Ipsos Mori data although some other polls do suggest that the traditional gender gap has returned in 2010.

                                                                                                                                                          Oct 1974                  1979                              1983                        1987                          1992                           1997                       2001                   2005                     2010
Men
Conservative 32 43 42 43 41 31 32 34 38
Labour 43 40 30 32 37 45 42 34 28
Lib / Alliance / LD 18 13 25 23 18 17 18 22 22
Con lead -11 +3 +12 +11 +4 -14 -10 0
 
+10
Women
Conservative 39 47 46 43 44 32 33 32 36
Labour 38 35 26 32 34 44 42 38 31
Lib / Alliance / LD 20 15 27 23 18 18 19 23 26
Con lead +1 +12 +20 +11 +10 -12 -9 -6 +4
 
  Gender gap is the difference between the Conservative d among men

and the Conservative lead among women                                                                                        -12                              -9                                -8                                  0                                   -6                                 -2                           - 1                   +6                         +5   

 

A negative gender gap indicates the combined extent of  relative female pro-Conservative and anti-Labour voting while the positive gender gap which appeared in 2005 indicates the combined extent of relative female anti-Conservative and pro-Labour voting The above data could be extended to take account of interrelationships between gender, age and voting behaviour. It would then be found that younger women are particularly pro-Labour and anti-Conservative  perhaps due to long run generational changes in attitudes and values and/or to the return to Parliament of an increasing number of female, Labour MPs and/or to Labour's greater willingness to campaign on female related issues. However many young women may have been dissuaded from voting Labour as a result of UK involvement in the Iraq war and , in any case no pro-Labour gender gap is present in the case of female voters 55+

Click here for IPSOS MORI 2010 data

According to Ipsos Mori data this positive [i.e. non -traditional gender gap continued in 2010 when  Women were 5% more likely to vote Conservative than Labour [36% Cons and 31% Labour] but men were 10% more likely to vote Conservative than to vote Labour [38% Cons and 28% Labour ] which results in a positive gender gap of 5 [down from 6 in 2005] illustrating that women's traditional relative Conservatism still did not apply in 2010. {See above link to IPSOS MORI 2010 General Election analysis for further information.]

 [However  it is important  to note  that there may be some uncertainly as to this conclusion since in some YouGov surveys at the time of the 2010 General Election the traditional gender gap does reappear and also a research study cited in Britain at the Polls 2010 : Nicholas Allen and John Bartle {Editors] 2010 reaches the same conclusion . Students should discuss with their teachers how to respond to this divergence in research findings. ]

.

Click here for the BBC's Map of the 2001 General Election Results

Click here for the BBC's Map of the 2005 General Election Results

Click here for the BBC's Map of the 2010 General Election Results

Voters in Scotland, Wales and the more northerly regions of Great Britain have traditionally more likely to vote Labour than Conservative  partly because there have traditionally been larger percentages of working class voters in these areas and because in areas of high working class concentration the likelihood that working class voters will in fact vote Labour tends to be greater. It has been noted elsewhere that the linkages between social class and voting behaviour have tended to weaken especially since the 1960s but it has also been argued that there are good reasons to believe that this process of class dealignment may be stronger in the South of England than in Northern England, Scotland and Wales.

The following data illustrate regional differences in voting behaviour between 1997 and 2010. They have been collated from successive House of Commons Library Research Papers on the General Elections of 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010. {Notice that I have included the SNP and PC votes as percentages of the Scottish and Welsh votes respectively but have not included the SNP and PC votes as percentages of the GB and UK votes; neither have I included data on votes for other UK parties nor on the vote shares of the Northern Irish parties. Interested students may consult the original sources for these data. ] 

Percentage Vote Shares of Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP and PC 1997-2010

  Cons 1997 Cons 2001 Cons 2005 Cons 2010 Lab 1997 Lab 2001 Lab 2005 Lab 2010 Lib Dem 1997 Lib Dem 2001 Lib Dem 2005 Lib Dem 2010 SNP 1997 SNP 2001 SNP 2005 SNP 2010 PC 1997 PC 2001 PC 2005 PC 2010
North East 19.8 21.3 19.5 23.7 64.0 59.4 52.9 43.6 12.6 16.7 23.3 23.6                
North. West 27.6 29.3 28.7 31.7 53.6 50.7 45.1 39.4 14.5 16.7 21.4 21.6                
Yorks. and Humber 28.0 30.2 29.1 32.8 51.9 48.6 43.6 34.4 16.0 17.1 20.7 22.9                
East Midlands 34.9 37.3 37.1 41.2 47.8 45.1 39.0 29.8 13.6 15.4 18.5 20.8                
West Midlands 33.7 35.0 35.0 39.5 47.0 44.8 38.7 30.6 13.8 14.7 18.6 20.3                
East 39.5 41.8 43.3 47.1 38.6 36.8 29.8 19.6 17.1 17.5 21.8 24.1                
London 31.2 30.5 31.9 34.5 49.5 47.4 38.9 36.6 14.6 17.5 21.9 22.1                
South East 41.9 42.9 45.0 49.3 29.1 29.4 24.4 16.2 23.3 23.7 25.4 26.2                
South West 36.7 38.5 38.6 42.8 26.4 26.3 22.8 15.4 31.3 31.2 32.6 34.7                
                                         
England 33.7 35,2 35.7 39.5 43.5 41.4 35.5 28.1 18.0 19.4 22.9 24.2                
Scotland 17.5 15.6 15.8 16.7 45.6 43.3 38.9 42.0 13.0 16.3 22.6 18.9 22.1 20.1   17.7        
Wales 19.6 21.0 21.4 26.1 54.7 48.6 42.7 36.2 12.3 13.8 18.4 20.1         9.9 14.3 12.6 11.3
Great Britain 31.5 32.7 33.2 36.9 44.3 42.0 36.1 29.7 17.2 18.8 22.6 23.6                
UK 30.7 31.7 32.4 36.1 43.2 40.7 35.2 29.0 16.8 18.3 22.0 23.0                
Regional Variation [RV] Statistic     27.5 32.6     27.0 27.4     14.2 15.8                

With regard to the General Elections of 1997, 2001 , 2005 and 2010 if we compare the General Election results of 1997 and 2010 we may note the following main regional trends

Within the regions voters in conurbations and large cities have been generally more likely to vote Labour and less likely to vote Conservative than voters than voters living in small towns and rural areas and there are also additional factors relating to particular constituencies which may influence their voting patterns such that, for example constituencies with relatively high proportions of white collar workers and retired voters are relatively more Conservative while constituencies in deprived inner city areas are especially pro-Labour. [See Britain Votes 2005 edited by Pippa Norris and Christopher Wlezien for further details.]

These regional and local differences in voting behaviour have been explained primarily in terms of social class- related factors.

  1. Regions and localities with relatively high concentrations of working class residents and relatively low concentrations of middle class residents are likely to generate more Labour voters simply because of the relatively large numbers of working class residents.

  2. However in regions and localities of high working class concentration the strength of the political socialisation process encouraging working class voters to vote Labour is likely to be especially strong so that voting support for Labour is likely to be greater than might have been predicted from the proportions of working class and middle class residents alone and even middle class Labour voting is likely to increase in such areas.. Similar processes operate in regions and localities with high concentrations of middle class residents to increase middle class and also working class support for the Conservative Party.

 

Religion was a much more significant influence on voting behaviour in mainland Britain from the mid C19th until the early C20th when members of the Church of England were especially likely to support the Conservative Party and Catholics and Nonconformist churches were more likely to support the Liberal Party. It continues to have a very strong influence on voting behaviour in Ireland and also in certain key areas on mainland Britain such as Liverpool and Glasgow where Catholics have traditionally been out of sympathy with traditional Conservative governments' rejection of an independent united Ireland  and Protestants have supported the Conservative defence of an independent and Protestant dominated Northern Ireland. Similar views can also be found in certain key areas on mainland Britain such as Liverpool and Glasgow where religious links with Ireland may override social class loyalties and cause many working class Protestants to vote Conservative and middle class Catholics to vote Labour..

However with the rise of the Labour Party and the growth of social class based voting religion became a less important determinant of voting behaviour. Nevertheless between 1945 and 1970 Catholics  were quite significantly more likely to vote Labour and less likely to vote Conservative than supporters of he Church of England and other Protestant denominations  mainly because mainland British Catholics may often have had family connections with Ireland but also because they were more likely than Protestants to be working class so that their voting behaviour was actually explained more by their class membership than by their religion.  The following data show continuing correlations between voting behaviour and religion in 2001 but these correlations too are likely mainly to reflect the indirect influence of social class.

It is important to note also that in the 2005 General Election there were greater than average declines in support for the Labour Party in constituencies with large Muslim communities because of Muslim opposition to the Iraq War which may however have derived from a complex combination of religious and ethnic influences. Labour lost Bethnal Green and Bow  to the Respect candidate George Galloway [who had consistently opposed the Iraq War] partly as a result of the defection of Muslim voters.

 

17-22 May 2001
Base: 1,960 adults 18+
  All RC CofE CofS Free Church etc Oth Prot Other None
  % % % % % % % %
Base: 1,960 239 966 105 110 25 142 356
Conservative 27 19 33 20 24 29 12 22
Labour 52 60 50 53

48

33 63 52
Lib Dem 16 16 14 6 24 12 22 21
SNP/PC 3 1 * 21 1 27 2 3
Green 1 1 1 0 1 0 * 2
Ref/UKIP/Dem 1 3 1 0 0 0 1 *
Other 1 1 * 0 2 0 * 1
Would not vote 11 13 17 6 5 25 17 16
Undecided 13 10 9 10 11 10 16 12
Refused 2 3 2 1 2 0 1 2

 

 

Sociology students will be familiar with the important distinction between "race" [which is a biologically based concept of negligible scientific validity] and the much more useful concept of ethnicity which refers to the cultural, religious and linguistic aspects of different social groups' lives. I focus here on relationships between ethnicity and voting behaviour.

IPSOS MORI Estimates of Voting Behaviour in the General Election of 1997

  Con Lab Lib Dem Other Labour Lead
White 32 43 18 7 11
Non-White 18 70 9 3 52
Asian 22 66 9 3 44
Black 12 82 5 1 70

As is shown above ethnic minority voters [both Asian and Black] were far more likely than White voters to vote Labour and far less likely to vote Conservative in the General election of 1997. This, of course, should come as no surprise since although ethnic minority members can be found throughout the British class structure Afro-Caribbean origin and Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin people are represented disproportionately in the working class, disproportionately likely to experience poverty and also disproportionately likely to live in large conurbations where working class support for Labour is strongest. The discrepancy between Black and Asian voting can be explained at least to some extent by the more privileged situation of Indian voters relative to other ethnic minority voters.

Nevertheless in overall terms ethnic minority members in all social classes are more likely than white voters in the same social classes to vote Labour which suggests that ethnicity has an important independent effect on voting behaviour beyond what would be predicted solely by the consideration of the class situations of ethnic minority voters. Ethnic minority voters may tend to believe that even if significant patterns of ethnic disadvantage continue to exist in UK society, Labour governments have at least addressed these problems more meaningfully than have Conservative governments which, if anything are associated with the hardening of ethnic inequalities especially in the era of Thatcherism. Furthermore although ethnic minorities are heavily underrepresented among MPs in all political parties it has traditionally seemed more likely that their representation would increase faster in the Labour Party .

 

IPSOS MORI Estimates of Voting Behaviour in the General Election of 2005 [Click here for the  2006 Ipsos Mori paper Ethic Minority Voters and Non-Voters at the 2005 British General Election by Roger Mortimore and Kully Kaur Ballagan from  which the following data have been extracted]

  All Caribbean African Indian Bangladeshi Pakistani Other/Mixed
Con 10 3 2 11 9 11 13
Lab 58 80 79 56 41 50 47
Lib Dem 16 5 11 14 16 25 22
Other 4 2 1 1 21 8 5
Refused to say 12 11 7 17 13 7 12

 

The above data on the 1997 and 2005 General Elections are not fully comparable since the 1997 data are drawn from Ipsos Mori's national survey classifying ethnic minority members into  the broad Black and Asian categories while the 2005 data are drawn from a small weighted sample of 1220 ethnic minority voters who are classified into differing ethnic groups within the broader Black and Asian categories.

In the 2005 sample the percentages of Caribbean and African voters voting Labour  were only  slightly smaller than the percentage of Black voters voting Labour in the 1997 sample  whereas the percentages of Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani voters voting Labour in the 2005 sample were  considerably smaller than the percentage of Asian voters voting Labour in 1997. Support for the Conservative Party was slightly higher among all three categories of Asian voters in the 2005 sample than for Asian voters as a whole in the 1997 sample but  support for the Liberal Democrats [which opposed the Iraq War]  among all three categories of Asian voters was  significantly higher in the 2005 sample than in the 1997 sample. Bangladeshi and Pakistani voters were significantly more likely than Indian voters in the 2005 sample to support Other parties[ mainly the Respect Party which also opposed the Iraq War] but it is noticeable also that in the 2005 sample  whereas Bangladeshis were more likely to vote for Other parties than for the Liberal Democrats the reverse was the case among Pakistanis.

 Although Labour did face significant electoral difficulties in 2005 as a result of the defection from Labour of many Muslim voters as a response to the Iraq war  and to  legislation relating to asylum seekers and anti-terrorism Labour only lost one parliamentary seat [Bethnal Green and Bow] as  a result of such defections, in this case mainly to the Respect Party. In the 2005 General Election Respect fielded 26 candidates and approximately 25% of its total national votes were gained by George Galloway in Bethnal Green and Bow which, according to the 2001 Census has 35.7% of Bangladeshi residents but only 2.7% of other Asian residents  and also, at 40%, has the highest concentration of Muslim residents  of all constituencies in the UK.

Ultimately in the 2005 General Election 13 Labour ethnic minority MPs were elected compared with two Conservative ethnic minority MPS and no Liberal Democrat ethnic minority MPs . 

[I am grateful to Mr. A. Endersby of Bishop Wordsworth's School Salisbury for drawing my attention to the Ipsos Mori report on the 2005 General Election ]

When he became leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron stated that he hoped to promote the election of more Conservative BME MPs and this may have encouraged greater electoral support among BME voters [especially perhaps among Indian voters] for the Conservatives.  In the event in 2010 27 BME MPs were elected to Parliament:  16 Labour MPs , 11 Conservative MPs and zero Liberal Democrats. and so  Mr. Cameron can claim to have made some progress in this respect. Nevertheless members of BME groups are still under-represented in Parliament: at the time of the 2001 Census BME members constituted 7.9% of the UK population but only 4.2% of MPs after the 2010 General Election.  Labour regained Bethnal Green and Bow from Respect in the 2010 General Election.

It has been argued that gradual changes in the UK class structure resulting in the increased representation of ethnic minority members within the UK middle class could be expected to lead to increased support for the Conservative party especially perhaps among Indian -origin and some -African origin voters. However you may Click here for a Runnymede Trust/BES Slide Presentation on Ethnic Minority Voting in the 2010 General Election which suggests  that even though there has been some decline in Minority Ethnic support for Labour Minority Ethnic voters remained considerably more likely to vote Labour than to vote Conservative in 2010..

 

Document Summary

The relatively stable patterns of voting behaviour which existed from 1945-1970 were increasingly replaced by increasing electoral volatility leading to new theories of voting behaviour focusing on the decline of party identification [or partisan dealignment] and class dealignment . These developments will be discussed in the following document.

 

 

 

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