Introducing Politics for AS level

Holmes An Introduction to the Study of Politics cover
Lecturer resources

Student Resources - Chapter four

Chapter 4: Voting Behaviour

SETTING THE SCENE

The previous chapter looked at the way in which elections are organized; this chapter looks at how people vote in them. Why do some people always vote for the same party? What makes people shift suddenly in large numbers from supporting the government to voting for the opposition party in a general election? There are links here to be drawn with the earlier discussion in chapter 2, which looked at why people vote at all, why they participate in politics. The same sort of analysis that was used in the treatment of political participation in that chapter will be used here.

KEY TOPICS

  • An introduction to the study of voting behaviour
  • Long-term or sociological factors in voting behaviour
  • Other long-term factors in voting behaviour: geography, gender, age and race
  • Short-term or political factors in voting behaviour

Are any of the terms below unclear to you? If so, perhaps you should look over this chapter or use the searchable glossary to familiarise yourself with these terms.

  • Class dealignment
  • Party identification (or partisan alignment)
  • Floating Voters
  • Proportional Representation
  • Voter Volatility
  • Salient Issue
  • The boomerang effect
  • Tactical voting

Matching Exercise: Chapter Four

Matching Exercise - Match the terms on the left with the most appropriate description on the right
Class dealignment The changeable nature of modern voters, who are willing to switch their votes from one party to another. The opposite is voter stability.
Party identification (or partisan alignment) Using your vote in the most effective way, especially to express a negative preference.
Floating voters (or swing voters) Voters who are not naturally or reliably attached to a particular party and who vote for different parties at different times.
Voter volatility The tendency since about 1970 for the decline of the simple link between the working class and voting Labour and the middle class and voting Conservative
Salient issue

Using your vote in the most effective way, especially to express a negative preference.
The bandwagon effect The way in which the opinion polls may encourage people to vote for the party which is ahead in the polls.
The boomerang effect The way in which particular people consistently support the same political party, adopting its ideology and voting for it on a regular basis.
Tactical voting An issue which the voters consider to be important.

Further reading for Chapter Four

D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997 (Palgrave, 1997): this and the next two books are the great academic studies of the elections, brim full of statistics and insights.

D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2001 (Palgrave, 2001).

D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2005 (Palgrave, 2005).

D. Denver, Elections and Voting in Britain (Palgrave, 2002): a very clear analysis of changes over time in voting behaviour.

Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie, Putting Voters in Their Place: Geography and Elections in Great Britain (OUP, 2006): academic and up-to-date.

D. Kavanagh, Election Campaigning (Blackwell, 1995): a careful and engaging dissection of how election campaigning has changed in recent years.

Websites

Multiple Choice Quiz 4

Click here to access the Multiple Choice Quiz for this Chapter.

Student resources