Parties and voters (Politics prelims)

Stable links to political parties are declining over time in advanced democracies.

UK evidence:

In the UK, the proportion of the electorate identifying strongly with a party dropped from 45% in 1964 to just 10% in 2005 (Fieldhouse, et al., 2020).

Stable links to political parties are declining over time in advanced democracies.

Electoral volatility evidence:

One of the greatest indicators of dealignment would be the weakening of partisan consistency and thus greater electoral volatility, as voters are committing to a party election-by-election.

Dalton et al. (2000) finds a statistically significant trend of increasing volatility in party shares across 18 core advanced industrial democracies.

Stable links to political parties are declining over time in advanced democracies.

Fall and rise of parties evidence:

The fall of established parties, or the rise of new ones, also indicates political volatility.

• Canada’s Progressive Conservative party dropped to two seats in 1993 after winning majorities in the previous two elections.

• The New Zealand Labour party suffered a similar fate in 1990, and new parties such as Forza Italia have sprung to popularity.

• In 2020, Unidas Podemos – formed only in 2016 – joined the first nationwide coalition-government in Spanish politics since 1939.

Analysis finds that – excluding the Netherlands - the effective number of parties within advanced industrial democracies has increased in the post-war era, and Tavits (2005) finds a positive relationship between the effective number of parties and a decrease in partisanship.

Stable links to political parties are declining over time in advanced democracies.

Vote shifting evidence:

There is an increasing tendency for voters to report they have shifted their votes between elections. For example, 29% of the Swedish electorate said they had changed their vote in 1994 (Holmberg 1994) compared to just 7% in the 1960 election. In 1998, over two-thirds of the Dutch population reported that they sometimes vote for different parties.

What is the sociological approach? What evidence suggests it is still strong?

Emphasizes the role of social characteristics, contexts, and psychology in forming political attachments.

The experiences and interests of particular cleavages in society become aligned with a particular party, and these demographics provide support as long as the party continues to advocate on their behalf through favourable policies and programmes.

• Over 91% of black Americans have voted Democrat in each of the past four elections (Pew Research Centre, 2022).

Traditional influence of class? UK

Class was the traditional foundation of party identification in many democracies

Labour trade union associations + commitment to redistributionist policies = party of the working class. Conservative’s commitment to business enterprise and property rights = party of the middle class.

Are class links still prevalent?

These links are eroding. In 2019, the Conservative Party won the largest proportion of the vote across all four social classes: more from the C2 (those in skilled manual occupations) than C1 or even AB (the most affluent). This indicates a clear divergence from traditional party links.

‘Significant and non-trivial’ evidence for the decline of class voting can also be seen in Australia, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and to a lesser extent Germany and Italy (Evans, 2013).

What are reasons for the decline of class voting?

• Education no longer concentrated within the middle classes.

• The proportion of the population who are manual working class has declined massively.

Black (1958): a party could maximize the number of votes it receives by converging on the position of the median voter. We have seen this in action in the UK: Labour and the Conservatives have adopted centrist policies that appeal to a wider class base. In particular, Tony Blair’s New Labour shifted the party’s attention towards the middle classes as they could no longer rely on the dwindling working class to get into power.

What is the impact of ideological convergence?

Evans and de Graaf (2013) see this ideological convergence of major political parties, rather than the convergence of social classes, as the key reason behind the decline of stable class-based links. There is less of a reason to form stable links to one party over the other when they hold such similar views.

How does age affect voting?

Since 1997, age – rather than class – has become the dividing line in British elections. YouGov (2017) reported that ‘for every 10 years older a voter is, their chance of voting Tory increases by around nine points,’ and in 2019 the average crossover point between the two parties was 39 years old.

Are these age-based links stable and reliable?

However, you cannot describe the partisan attachment young people have towards Labour as stable, when evidence suggests the relationship is continuously eroding with age. Furthermore, young people are increasingly non-partisan altogether. This can be seen in the poor voter turnout in the 18-24 category, only 47% in 2019.

Traditionally, how was the party-identification seen to emerge?

Traditional conceptions of party-identification suggest it typically emerges as a result of childhood and adolescent (socialization) experiences, and then sticks with the individual throughout life. Humans are biased information processors so partisan attachments – once formed - are relatively immune to changes in the political environment.

Are young people forming these attachments?

However, recently there has been a huge increase in the number of young voters with no affiliation to any party. Links are not forming to begin with. Dalton (2000) finds statistically significant evidence to suggest that the decrease of partisanship in advanced industrial democracies has been disproportionately concentrated among the young, and Fieldhouse et al. (2020) agrees that partisan dealignment has primarily been driven by generational replacement. However, they both admit that the reason for this change is unclear.

What is there to say about the eroded role of parties?

At some level, dealignment is linked to the eroded role of parties as political institutions. Special interest groups have assumed many of the parties’ interest articulation functions, and the media have assumed many of the information functions.

The growing availability of political information, and rising educational levels in general, mean that the electorate are more able to make complex political decisions on their own without resorting to the political cues of partisanship.

Young people are turning to social movements and online campaigning to pressure rather than support major parties.

What is the rationality/running tally approach?

The individual rationality approach suggests that voters employ an expected utility-maximizing strategy when casting their ballot.

Party identification is not only a product of early-life socialization, but a ‘running tally’ of judgements about each party’s performances in government, giving more weight to recent information.

These judgements are becoming more and more negative.

What evidence is there for disappointment at parties?

Dalton (2000) emphasizes how growing doubts and scepticism about political parties have spread through industrial economies.

• The percentage of Canadians who expressed confidence in political parties dropped from 30% to just 11% between 1979 and 1996.

• Similar trends have been found in Britain, Italy, Japan and many Scandinavian countries.

• Dealignment in Germany arose from mounting policy problems and evidence of corruption within German parties.

These sentiments push away the electorate from forming strong partisan attachments.

How can individual events cause disappointment?

Individual events can destroy party links e,g coalition saw Liberal Democrats drop from 57 to 8 seats in 2015. Loyal supporters felt betrayed by the coalition and angered over the broken promise not to raise tuition fees.

How do single-issue voters decide?

Single-issue voters decide to support a given party because they perceive it as most able to handle their most pressing political problem. If parties maintain their reputations for certain issues, this can lead to stable links with such voters, and the most coveted issue to ‘own’ is always the economy.

Why is the economy so important?

Regardless of what model of voter behaviour is employed, economic expectations always matter for party support. Macroeconomic conditions, particularly interest rates, are the driving force behind a governing-party’s electoral support and Tavits (2005) finds that GDP growth and low inflation have hugely positive implications for ruling parties.

Which party owns the economy?

• The Global Financial crisis was widely seen as indictment of the Labour Party’s economic management, and this had a profound effect on the 2010 election and persists to this day.

• Liz Truss’ disastrous mini budget in September 2022, costing the UK economy £30 billion pounds, alongside relatively low economic growth and spiralling inflation in recent years, has meant that now the Conservative party have also lost their reputation for economic competence.

From an economic perspective, voters may feel there is no good reason to maintain stable links with either party.

What were traditional issues that the right and left owns?

Political parties grow reputations for dealing with certain issues when in office and mobilize support by only emphasizing issues over which they have ownership.  Traditionally issues relating to crime prevention and national defense work to the advantage of right-of-centre parties as opposed to social welfare and public service issues which work for left-of-centre parties.

Do issues lead to stable links? What evidence suggests not?

In general, issue-based voting may be stable in the short-term, but links between voters and issues can suddenly sever.

In March 2020, 45% of the population responded that the Conservative party would be the best at handling Law and Order, and 37% said they would be best at handling immigration. The party has long had a positive reputation for dealing with such issues. However, as of April 2024, the Labour party now leads the Conservative in both of these issues, although the most popular response is now ‘don’t know.’ Issue-voting becomes redundant if no major parties have a strong claim to ‘own’ the issue.

What is there to say about Brexit?

Fieldhouse et al. (2020) emphasizes the role of Brexit in changing voter preferences in recent elections, rather than economic issues nor social change.

The Conservatives made huge gains in traditional Red Wall labour seats, including nine which had been held by Labour since the war, due to their promise to ‘Get Brexit Done.’

This highlights how salient-enough issues can sever party links.

(Again, however, the Labour party campaigned for remain, and the conservatives failed so spectacularly with Brexit that neither party owns this issue either.)

Impact of electoral shocks on voting UK evidence

With two huge electoral shocks, in the financial crisis and Brexit, it is no wonder that across the four elections from 2005 to 2017, around 60% of voters in the UK switched parties at least once.

What is the personalization hypothesis?

At the core of the personalization hypothesis lies the notion that ‘individual political actors have become more prominent at the expense of parties’ (Karvonen 2010).

Certainly, in the UK, over the past few decades, we have seen the ‘personalization’ of the Prime Minister’s role and an increased spotlight on the leader within parties’ electoral strategy. Garzia (2013) finds that evaluations of party leaders have become the most powerful driver of partisan alignments at the individual level.

Who supports the personalization hypothesis?

Nigel Farage resigned as the leader of UKIP in 2015 after the party won 12.6% of the national vote. In 2017, under the leadership of Paul Nuttall, they returned just 1.8%. Farage made a return to frontline politics by launching the Brexit Party who, just six months later, won 30.5% of the popular vote in the 2019 European parliament elections.

Why look at the US?

Alongside Britain, the US’ party-system is the world’s most established, dating back to the late 18^th century, and enjoys the most global news-coverage.

What was the trend in the US regarding partisanship? Has this continued?

Dalton, in 2000, discussed how Americans were focusing less on political parties and becoming increasingly neutral towards both established forces. Independent Ross Perot stole 18.9% of the popular vote from the Democrat and Republican parties in 1992.

However, more recently, the public are becoming increasingly driven again by their Republican or Democrat party identities and studies find that partisanship has been steadily rising since 1984.

What factor increases partisanship?

Multiple scholars have found that party polarization strengthens partisan attachments (Lupu 2015). Parties become irrelevant when they agree on policies but suddenly become far more important whenever partisan conflict gets heated.

How does social psychology explain this?

Studies in social psychology suggest that people typically hold some image, or prototype, in their head when they think about a particular social group, including political parties, and voters then identify with the party whose prototype they most closely resemble. Hogg (2004) emphasizes how citizens feel more strongly about the attachment when they view the prototype of other groups as very different to their own. The greater differences they perceive, the more strongly they identify with a party.

Why does this explain the return to partisanship in the US?

This explains the return to partisanship in the US as members of the two major US parties increasingly dislike each other. In 2015, only 13% of Democrats and 15% of Republicans had net favourable assessments from their rivals, and both parties feel increasing anger towards one another. For this reason, voters are once more exhibiting stable party links to the established parties.

Personalization hypothesis in the US?

Voters have formed a strong attachment with Donald Trump, not necessarily with the Republican party. In fact, if Trump were to set up his own party, it is likely that he would take most of the most loyal ‘Republican’ voters with him.

How does the competitiveness of the election affect things?

Voters in intensely competitive election campaigns rely more on issues and ideology and less on party identification.

What is there to say about social cleavages in Eastern Europe?

In post-communist Europe, the general effect of social cleavages on voting behaviour is not very strong at all (Tavits, 2005). Interestingly, this may suggest that the communist system effectively worked to erase social cleavages and may explain the high level of electoral volatility in the region today.

What is there to say about emerging democracies?

The stability of partisan attachments in many emerging democracies can be doubted due to a culture of clientelism where voters are incentivized to exercise their franchise in return for personal benefits.

In Benin, the delivery of private goods before and during elections is the primary electoral strategy of the party in government.

In Peru’s 2010 local elections it is estimated that 12.8% of voters were offered benefits in exchange for votes (a law has since been passed prohibiting the distribution of gifts).

It can be argued that emerging democracies never did have stable partisan attachments to begin with because they lack democratic tradition.

What are the three key points?

Class voting, disappointment, youth identification.

America stats on polarization:

54% say there is a great deal of difference between what the Republican and Democratic parties stand for (Pew Research Centre, 2023)

Among Democrats, 27% say GOP policies are a threat to the well-being of the country;  among all Republicans, 36% think Democratic policies threaten the nation (Pew Research centre, 2014)

A 2017 Stanford study found that the strongest attachment which Americans have is connection to their political party: stronger than race, religion or ethnicity.

Both parties have moved further away from the ideological centre since the early 1970s. Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years (Pew Research Centre, 2022)

American stats on Trump:

NBC News (2023) found that a third of Republican and Republican-leaning voters consider themselves supporters more of Trump than the Republican party.

28 percent of Republican primary voters are so devoted to the former president that they said they’d support him even if he ran as an independent (Whit Ayres, 2023)