voting behaviour key terms

class dealignment

Class dealignment is a process in which members of a social class no longer vote for the party that their class is aligned with.

partisan dealignment

A process which began in the 1970s whereby voters who used to be strongly attached to one party, identified with that party and always voted for it, detached themselves from that relationship in ever greater numbers. It is closely associated with class dealignment.

governing competency

A key valence issue. Voters often base their decision in voting on how competent they feel the outgoing government has been and the potential competence of other parties

disillusion and apathy

A phenomenon that particularly affects the attitudes of the young and the very poor. It is a belief that politics and politicians do not take into account the interests of the young and the very poor, that politics cannot change anything for them. It is a significant factor in non-voting.

manifesto

A collection of beliefs, aspirations, commitments and promises presented to the electorate by parties at election time. The manifesto forms the basis of the winning party’s electoral mandate and allows parliaments or regional assemblies and the public to hold government to account.

mandate

A term referring to the consent granted to a political party at election time by the electorate. The mandate gives legitimacy to all the winning party’s manifesto commitments.

social class

The way in which social researchers classify people on the basis of their occupations and, to some extent, their income. Class can explain various forms of typical behaviour including political attitudes and voting trends. Traditional class groupings were the working, middle and upper classes. Researchers now talk about A, B, C1, C2, D and E classes.

deviant voting

This occurs when a person does not vote the way we would expect, given their social characteristics, especially their class. Examples are working class Conservatives and wealthy entrepreneurial Labour supporters.

floating / swing voters

A voter who tends to vote unpredictably in different elections and who is liable to change the way they vote fairly often.

instrumental voting

A term referring to voting behaviour which is motivated by self-interest. In other words, voters favour a party that they believe will do the most good for themselves through its policies.

turnout

Turnout is the proportion of those eligible to vote who do actually turn up to vote. It is expressed as a percentage of the electorate.

abstention

This is when people, especially the young, refuse to vote (i.e. they abstain,) not on the basis of ignorance or apathy but because they wish to protest about the state of politics or the collective failure of political parties, or the lack of a party which represents them effectively.

Core voters

These are voters who will invariably support one or other of the main parties. Core voters mostly, though not always, fall into patterns based on social class and region. It is believed the core Conservative and Labour votes have been eroded in recent decades.

valence

In psychology this is the intrinsic ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of an event or object or situation. In politics, it can be explained as the general ‘image’ of a party and its leader, which may affect voting. Voters choose a party based on their honesty, competence, strength or reliability, rather than their particular policies.  Valence voting is sometimes also called ‘competence’ voting.

valence issues

Where most of the electorate hold similar views on an issue, they may decide to vote for one party or another based on how well they think its party, and / or its leader, will manage that issue, as well as on a judgement of how well the party managed it in the past. These are known as valence issues.

tactical voting

When voters in UK general elections feel that their first-choice vote will be wasted because it is for a party which has no chance of winning the constituency, they may change their vote to a second choice. By doing this they may have an influence on the outcome. Typically, supporters of the Liberal Democrats or the Green Party will vote either Labour or Conservative because their first-choice party cannot win the constituency. This is known as tactical voting.