This task links to the Course Assessment Specification (CAS): Theories of voting behaviour - party identification model.

Party identification is a long-term, affective attachment to one’s preferred political party. Research finds that these party identities are a potent cue in guiding the attitudes and behavior of the average person. Partisans tend to repeatedly support their preferred party, even when the candidates and the issues change. Party ties mobilise people to vote to support their party, and to work for the party during the campaign. And given the limited information most people have about complex political issues, party ties provide a cue to what positions one should support. 

Research has found that many people began the campaign with their decision already made. People often attributed their votes to long-established family traditions, or positions they had held across many elections. These partisan ties are similar to identifications with a social class, religious denomination, or other social group. There is a cross-over with the sociological model of voting in this sense. Social class and family are key drivers of voting behaviour for both the party-identification and sociological models.

Partisanship means that a voter has a predisposition to support his or her preferred party. Partisanship has been described as the basis for a “normal vote”—the vote expected when other factors in the election are evenly balanced. If other factors come into play, such as issue positions or candidate images, their influence can be measured by the change in preferences from initial partisan predispositions. For the unsophisticated voter, a long-term partisan loyalty and repeated experience with one’s preferred party provides a clear and low-cost cue for voting. Even for the sophisticated citizen, a candidate’s party affiliation normally signifies a policy program that serves as the basis for reasonable electoral choice.

Psephologists demonstrated that from the 1950s to the early 1970s voting behaviour was clearly correlated with a range of social variables including social class, age, gender, region, religion and ethnicity and that social class was the most significant influence on voting behaviour which enabled P.G.J. Pulzer to write in Political Representation and Election (1967) that "Class is the basis of British party policies: all else is embellishment and detail", a conclusion which was endorsed fully by David Butler and Donald Stokes in their famous study "Political Change in Britain” (1974).

The vast majority of British voters [approximately 90% of respondents in Butler and Stokes' surveys] stated that they did identify with either the Conservative Party, the Labour Party or, to a lesser extent the Liberal Party and the respondents' party identifications usually remained relatively stable over the course of several elections and often throughout voters' lives sometimes hardening with age.

The link between voting behaviour and social class was at its strongest in the General Elections of 1950 and 1951 when approx. 2/3 of working class voters voted Labour and 1/3 Tory, while approx 3/4 of the middle class voted Tory and 1/5 Labour. Class voting remained fairly high throughout the 1960s while support for the Liberals was very low and fairly evenly distributed across the social classes, although with a slight middle class bias.

But why did so many voters vote in accordance with their social class position between 1945-1970?

Butler and Stokes argued that most voters had only limited knowledge and understanding of key political issues of the early 1960s such as the state of the UK economy or the desirability of otherwise of UK entry into the EEC, as it then was; they could only rarely describe in any detail the policy differences between the political parties; and their political opinions were often ideologically inconsistent in the sense that they could only rarely be combined into composite ideological positions which were recognisably "left wing" or "right wing" or "centrist."

Therefore for most but not all voters the voting decision could not be explained as an individual response to perceived differences in party policies. Instead voting decisions could be better explained via the influences of long term social structural factors: it is in this sense that the Party Identification model came to be described as a sociological model of voting behaviour [as distinct from the more individualistic models of voting behaviour which were developed from the 1970s onwards. However Butler and Stokes did not deny totally the influences on voting behaviour of short term and medium issues, policies and events but these were considered to be much less influential than long term social structural factors.

Butler and Stokes argued that voters were heavily influenced by long term processes of political socialisation especially in the family but also in the work place and the wider community which presented them with generalised broad images of the political parties. Thus Labour might be presented as the party of the disadvantaged, of the trade unions, of the working class of nationalisation or of the welfare state while the Conservative Party might be presented as the party of private enterprise, of private property and the nation as a whole.

There were also, obviously important social class differences in these processes of political socialisation in which working class people and middle class people to identify especially with the Labour Party and the Conservative Party respectively and to vote accordingly. [Within these class differentiated socialisation processes members of each social class would be provided both with positive images of "their party" and negative images of opposing parties].

Given their relatively large numbers if all working class voters had voted Labour between 1945 and 1970 Labour would have won every single general election. However a substantial minority of working class voters voted Tory, and also a smaller, but still substantial minority of middle class voters voted Labour, even at the high point of class voting in the General Elections of 1950 and 1951. These cross-class voters, given their relatively small numbers, were described as "deviant" voters and various explanations were suggested to explain their deviant voting patterns.

Although we can agree with the already mentioned statement from P.G.J. Pulzer in Political Representation and Election (1967) that in relation to the period between 1945 and 1970 "Class is the basis of British party policies: all else is embellishment and detail", it is also necessary to investigate the effects of other social factors [ age, gender, region, religion and ethnicity] on voting behaviour in the period 1945-1970.

A Summary of the Party Identification Model of Voting Behaviour.

• The Party identification suggests that voters decisions are influenced much more by social structural variables [and especially by their social class position but also by their age, gender, region, religion and ethnicity] than by short term issues, policies and events.
• Differing social class positions result in class differences in political socialisation processes operating in the family, the work place and the wider community.
• Class differences in political socialisaton processes result in the transmission of differing broad party images which encourage working class and middle class people to identify mainly with the Labour Party or the Conservative Party respectively.
• Most voters vote in accordance with their party identification.

The Decline of Party Identification or Partisan Dealignment :

Psephologists have emphasised the extent to which Party Identification [which was so central to the explanation of voting behaviour in Butler and Stokes' Party Identification Model] declined significantly especially in the 1970s. It is generally agreed that since then overall party identification has changed little although there has been further long term decline in the extent of strong party identification.

The move away from voting according to class could also be due to a change in the size of the classes. Since the 1970s, the number of manual workers has fallen from nearly 50% of the population to just 33%. This is because of the changes in employment patterns, educational opportunities and the rising standard of living.

However, although it appears that voters are moving away from their natural class, statistics suggest that voting behaviour and class are still linked to some extent. In 2001, the highest social class, AB, voted 40% in favour of the Conservatives - less than in previous elections, but still a strong vote. Almost half of the working classes still voted Labour. The transfer of working class votes to Conservative and upper class votes to Labour might also be due to the fact that New Labour policies are moving further to the right. Although the elections in 1997 and 2001 saw Labour regaining C1 and C2 voters, this trend may be attributed to the collapse of the Conservative Party. It is said that opposition parties do not win elections; governments lose them.

In the 2010 General Election the Conservatives gained from all groups with the exception of the lowest class DE which stayed Labour. ABC1 (grouped together) had a 39% vote for the Conservatives while Labour had 27%. In the C2 class 37% voted Conservative compared to 29% for Labour, and in the DE group 31% voted Conservative and 40% Labour.

Your task is to watch the news report above in which people from Darlington are being interviewed about their voting intentions the day before the December 2019 General Election. Does this report show that the party identification model was relevant in this election?