Abstract
Chapter 5 uses data from the Essex CMS pre- and post-election surveys to investigate turnout and party choice in 2015. The turnout analyses study the effects of several predictor variables including political interest, political efficacy, sense of civic duty and social trust as well as differences in voting participation among major sociodemographic groups. Relationships between party choice and key ‘valence politics’ variables such as partisanship, party performance on important issues and party leader images are highlighted. Judgments about leader and party performance had powerful effects on party choice in 2015, with renewed economic optimism doing much to explain electoral support for Prime Minister Cameron and the Conservatives.
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Notes
On turnout in the 1945–2010 general elections, see, e.g., Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 1
and Paul Whiteley, Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders and Marianne C. Stewart, Affluence, Austerity and Electoral Change in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), ch. 1.
and Russell J. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 6th edition. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications/CQ Press, 2014), ch. 4.
See J. Scott Long and Jeremy Freeze, Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables Using Stata, 3rd edition. (College Station, TX: Stata Press, 2014).
David Butler and Donald E. Stokes, Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969).
Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).
For a useful summary of research employing spatial theory, see James F. Adams, Samuel Merrill III and Bernard Grofman, A Unified Theory of Party Competition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
See, Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Donald E. Stokes, ‘Spatial Models of Party Competition,’ American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), pp. 368–77.
The importance of heuristics for decision making in a wide variety of settings see, e.g., Gerd Gigerenzer, Ralph Hertwig and Thorsten Pachur (eds.), Heuristics: The Foundations of Adaptive Behavior (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Gerd Gigerenzer, Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
The classic statement is Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960).
See, e.g., Harold D. Clarke and Allan McCutcheon, ‘The Dynamics of Party Identification Reconsidered’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 73 (2009), pp. 704–28.
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© 2016 Harold D. Clarke, Peter Kellner, Marianne C. Stewart, Joe Twyman and Paul Whiteley
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Clarke, H.D., Kellner, P., Stewart, M.C., Twyman, J., Whiteley, P. (2016). Choosing to Vote and Choosing a Party. In: Austerity and Political Choice in Britain. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137524935_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137524935_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
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