Voting Behaviour + Media

Question 1

How does class affect voting behaviour?

Answer 1

• Up until the 1970s, voters in Britain were strongly influenced by class voting. Peter Pulzer, the political scientist, wrote that ‘Class is the basis of British party politics, all else is embellishment and detail’
• Class Dealignment since the 1940s, occurred as society became more affluent and working class people aspired to the middle class way of life. Gathered pace after Margaret Thatcher’s government introduced the Right to Buy scheme in 1980. Embourgeoisement - the acquisition or adoption of middle class values and manners
• However class still has a subtle role in determining voting behaviour as shown in the 2015 general election whereby 45% of professional and managerial voters supported the Conservatives and 41% of classes ‘DE’ voted Labour

Question 2

How does partisanship affect voting behaviour

Answer 2

• A result of growing affluence in the country has been the decline in the attachment felt by many voters to one of the two major parties as in the past loyalty would have been instilled by family tradition
• Has resulted in a growing sense of disillusion and apathy, the loss of confidence in the capacity of politics to make a difference. Therefore as a result of such, can be seen as a underlying factor for the success of the Brexit party and the country’s imminent departure from the EU.

Question 3

How does age affect voting behaviour

Answer 3

• Past elections have shown that older voters are more likely to vote Conservative as it believed to be a consequence of people becoming less comfortable with change as they age. Once more, elder people are more likely to own property and therefore will vote for the party that can be expected to protect their material interests
• The 2015 GE, 47% of voters aged 65+ voting for Conservative in comparison to 23% voting Labour
• A study by Onward has found that the current ‘tipping point’ age at which voters are more likely to vote Conservatives has risen from 47 to 51. Found that older Britons who vote Conservative out of habit will not be replaced by a younger generation

Question 4

What is the definition of rational choice model?

Answer 4

• The belief that more voters decide their vote by rationally comparing the different parties
• Ipsos Moris analysed that in April 1992, 81% of voters had already made their decision of who to vote for in May, in April 2015, only 60% had decided

Question 5

How do salient issue affect voting behaviour?

Answer 5

• According to an April 2015 YouGov poll, the most salient issue in 2015 was the economy → Economic Voting Model. Whilst Labour was considered the best party to manage the economy in 1997, 2001 and 2007, You Gov concluded that 39% of voters believed that the Conservatives would manage the economy best, with only 21% saying Labour
• At each of these elections, voters were passing judgment on the governing competency of the main parties. Labour’s 2016 Beckett Report noted that one of the most commonly cited reasons for the party’s defeat in the 2015 election was the failure to shake off the myth that we were responsible for the financial crash
• Conservatives were able to exploit the issue of government competency in the 2017 General election criticising Labour for announcing unaffordable spending commitments. Given credibility when Diane Abbott made the surprising revelation that the total cost of funding an additional 10,000 police officers would have been only £300,000 in an interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari

Question 6

How does party leadership affect voting behaviour?

Answer 6

• Key explanations for why both Tony Blair and David Cameron gained such high support from the female electorate was because women found both men rather charismatic. 67% of women voted for Blair in 1997 with 58% voting for Cameron in 2015
• Establishment of an ‘idiosyncratic look’ from anti politics figures. Pub man of Nigel Farage vs William Hague’s claim that he could drink 14 pints in one sitting
• In recent years British politics has become more ‘Americanised’ in a sense with greater focus on the leader of the party themselves rather than the policies behind such, current Conservative leadership indicative of such

Question 7

How does the conduction of election campaigns affect voting behaviour?

Answer 7

• 1997 General election, the Labour campaigning team lead by John Prescott successfully, Tony Blair’s New Labour with 43.2% of the popular vote and 418 seats in the Houses of Parliament. However, the extent to which Labour’s policy targeting contestable seats rather than secure seats was successful is debatable because although Labour did increase votes by an average of 12.5% in contestable seats, areas viewed as secure seats increased by 13.4%
• 2017 General election whereby ill sort advice from chief advisors such as Fiona Hill on contentious issues such as ‘Dementia tax’. Led not only to an embarrassing U turn by the Conservative party one day after the release of their party manifesto but led to doubts among traditionally Conservative voting pensioners
• Carries greater importance than it once did because of partisan dealignment meaning that there are more floating voters and contentious seats. In 2010, only 1% of the electorate was a member of the Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties

Question 8

What is the role of media in forming public opinion of party leaders?

Answer 8

• Play a vital role
• Headlines ran by the Sun tabloid prior to the 2015 election depicting Ed Miliband as Michael Foot, alluding to the terrible campaign of 1983
• Whilst the paint media may throw their weight behind such parties, this is often a response to the mood of the population rather than the media loading public opinion
• Particularly important in regard to valence voters who pass a judgement of government competency

Question 9

Governments lose elections rather than opponents who win them?

Answer 9

• 1997, contrived as being wholly true as the ‘shut up or put up’ challenge proposed to John Redwood by John Major and the various other Conservative internal issues hindered their place in the polls
• The 2 terrorist attacks that happened in the weeks commencing before the General election of 2017 highlighted the Conservative austerity measures and so undermined Theresa May’s position

Question 10

How does traditional media influence voting behaviour?

Answer 10

• The presence of partisan outlets can help persuade voters to elect a specific party. 1979 Election, after returning from a Caribbean conference, the Sun tabloid ran a story labeled Crisis? What Crisis? 1992 Election. March 1992 Sun headline berating Neil Kinnock for his role in the Jennifer’s Ear Fiasco. After Labour lost, the paper attributed such defeat to themselves headlining that ‘It was the Sun wot won it’
• However peoples current level of trust in the tabloids and broadsheets has eroded its importance. The 2019 Eldemen Trust Barometer suggested that only 32% of the public trust the journalists.

Question 11

How does television influence voting behaviour?

Answer 11

• Influence of television is hard to judge with a great deal of certainty. A survey found that 62% of respondents cited television as the strongest influence in helping them form an opinion in the run up to the 2015 election
• 1983 Election. Thatcher underwent 16 lengthy television interviews despite her protestations that she ‘disliked the way elections were being turned into media circuses’. ITV commissioned documentary entitled ‘The Woman at Number 10’, Italians replaced by British heroes in the blue room, showed her patriotism. With a majority of 144 seats, the Conservative victory in 1983 was one of the most convincing in modern political history

Question 12

How does social media influence voting behaviour?

Answer 12

• Jeremy Corbyn’s Momentum use of social media during 2017 with his unorthodox somewhat haphazard approach to Prime Minister’s question times aimed at capturing short timed videos which are easily shared on platforms such as Facebook or Twitter
• A survey on the eve of the 2015 election indicated that 70% of 18-24 year old relied almost totally on online sources to inform themselves

Question 13

To what is the role of media in a democratic society?

Answer 13

• A free media is a vital feature of a healthy democracy and can play an essential role in holding governments to account
• However there are concerns about the role of media in politics with popular newspapers tending to present overly simplified interpretations of political issues, focusing excessively on personalities
• Newspaper owners are primarily interested in boosting their circulation figures and cannot be held account in the same way as politicians. News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Its not by chance that Murdoch has successfully backed the winning government since the 1979 election with Margaret Thatcher
• Edmund Burke’s ‘Fourth Estate’ in 1787 when referring to the opening up of the House of Commons to newspaper reporting and the press, keeps governments in check by keeping society and the public informed