Voting Behaviour Examples Flashcards
Media Coverage of Brexit Referendum
2016 EU Referendum: Oxford research (‘UK Press Coverage Of The EU Referendum’)
- Found that 41% of newspaper coverage was pro Leave as against 27% pro Remain
- Assessed that Leave campaigning had less negative arguments about future (44% negative) than the remain campaign (77% negative)
- Arguments presented dominated by Economy (42%)
Issue Voting & Brexit Referendum
Ipsos Mori Issue Tracker
- High of 56% of adults considering immigration one of their top 2 issues in 2015
- Europe became one of the top 2 issues for 32% (shooting up from 10% in 2015)
Class Dealignment
2019 Election: Minimal difference in Conservative vote share between DE (41%) and AB (45%), goes against ‘Class is the basis of British Politics’ (Peter Pulzer 1967)
2017 Election: 44% of both ABC1 and C2DE voted Conservative, and Labour had only 2pp more votes in C2DE than ABC1
Print Media Influence
2017 Election
- 79% of Telegraph readers voted Conservative
- 73% of Guardian readers voted Labour
- Combined circulation that year amounted to only around 600,000
1997 Class voting
- Labour had strong working class support with 59% of DE voting for them and only 31% of AB
- Conservatives had 20pp less of DE vote for them than AB (stark contrast to now)
2019 Sociological Voting Factors
Education: Less educated vote conservative. More educated vote Labour.
58% with only GCSEs or below voted Conservative, Labour had 43% of those with a degree or above and only 25% of those with only GCSEs or lower
Age: Older vote Conservative. 62% of 18-24 voted Labour 19% voted Conservative
2017 BMG poll
67% of people don’t read manifestos
Current Labour Polling
May 2024
- Party is at 44% ahead of Conservatives at 24%
- Keir Starmer polling less favourably at 31% to Sunak’s 23%
- Election isn’t to be won by leadership it seems, more record of Cons. gov.
