“voting is No Longer a Matter of Loyalty to a Social Class. It is Now a Rational Choice Made by a Consumer in a Political Market Place.” to What Extent Do Sociological Arguments and Evidence Support This View of Voting in Britain Today?

“Voting is no longer a matter of loyalty to a social class. It is now a rational choice made by a consumer in a political market place.”

To what extent do sociological arguments and evidence support this view of voting in Britain today? (33 marks)

Sociologists who study psephology have always tended to focus on the relationship between voting and social class. The last two elections, in 2001 and 2005, have seen a drastic change though. There were record low turnouts, especially among young people, and the regional differences were more clear-cut than before. In recent years, sociologists have now focused more on other factors such as gender and ethnicity and have created their own models, such as the Rational Choice Model to try to explain the changes in voting behaviour.

Early studies of voting behaviour had always seen a strong correlation between voting behaviour and social class. This was known as Partisan Alignment where people had loyalty to a political party based on awareness of their class members

After Conser

Salvik and Crewe developed partisan de-alignment after seeing the conclusions of Butler and Stokes. They said that Butler and Stokes could not explain the reduction of class based voting and that although there had been more social mobility, it was not enough to account for the rise in deviant voting. Salvik and Crewe identified a number of short term factors that shaped the voters views and they co

hip. Butler and Stokes (1960) studied voting behaviour between 1951 and 1959 and discovered that voters had a “self image” of being either “Labour” or “Conservative” and few people changed their votes between elections unless they felt they had moved from working class to middle class. 67% of their working class sample voted for the Labour party but there was a stronger link between subjective class (self evaluation of ones class). Where subjective class equalled objective class over 80% of the sample voted for Labour. Butler and Stokes’ studies of conservative voters had the same conclusions where over 75% of middle class voters voted for conservative. There were always few “floating voters” who were prepared to consider changing their vote depending on what the parties were offering. Other sociologists saw this has proof of institutionalisation, that the two parties were deliberately claiming the natural needs of the voters. Butler and Stokes though believed that it was simple a Two Party System, since there was two classes there was always going to be two dominant parties. Labour and Conservative together never had less than 88% of the vote with Liberal Democrats only once gaining over 10% of the vote. The 12% not voting for Labour or Conservative were said to be “deviant voters”, people who deliberately voted for smaller parties to give Conservative less seats in parliament. Butler and Stokes studies do not support the view portrayed in the question because they felt that social class was a very important role in voting behaviour and that other options did not compare in importance. Butler and Stokes ideas were supported by Ivor Crewe who, in 1957, found that 62% of non-manual workers voted conservative and 64% of manual workers voted Labour. vative had won 3 elections in a row, sociologists were trying to find other explanations for why Conservative were winning when there were more working class people in the country than middle class. Butler and Rose (1962) argued that the so-called “deviant voters” were in fact secular voters; affluent factory workers who first evaluated the policies of political parties and then voted for the one that would benefit their own standard of living the most. They linked this emergence of secular voting to embourgeoisiement. This was the theory that the increased affluence of working class people in the 1960’s was leading them to identify with middle class values and attitudes. Affluent workers were enjoying living standards equal if not higher than middle class and so were inclined to vote Conservative instead of Labour. Butler and Rose agreed with the view that voting was no longer to do with loyalty to a class, as many working class voters were breaking out from their roots and voting Conservative. It also showed that class alignment, as a main factor of voting, was wavering among large sections of the working class. ncluded that the Labour vote in the 1980’s remained largely working class but, that the working class was no longer largely Labour. Examining Crewe’s work closely though saw that he never actually said anything that was radically new. He basically used the synthesis of the 1960’s voting theory and changed it for the 1980’s. It was argued by many other sociologists that he had exaggerated partisan alignment, that class had not withered away and that many manual workers, wherever they were situated, still thought in class terms.

A consumer model of voting by Himmelweit, Humphreys and Jaegar called the Rational Choice Model was introduced in the late 1980’s. They believed, and their model showed, that people had a “shopping list” of needs in their minds, whic

h they used when voting. They weighed up which party gave more of their needs or the most important ones and then voted for it. Other factors besides class are also closely related to voting behaviour. Ethnicity had never undergone a real change in voting behaviour until the Iraq war started. Labour had always attracted over 70% of ethnic minorities vote, 84.8% of African-Caribbean and Asians voted labour. But the Iraq War changed this: in 2005 a significantly higher amount of Muslims voting Liberal Democrats or in protest didn’t vote at all. This links to Himmelweit et al.’s model about a “shopping list” as different ethnicities have different needs. The amount of children in ethnic minority families is often higher than white people and so their needs may include more about childcare and maternity leave which made them more likely to vote for Labour. Up until 2001 there were differences in voting behaviour in gender for example women were more likely to vote than men but in the 2005 election there was barely a difference at all. Evidence showed that young women with children were more likely to vote Labour because they felt they managed issues such as childcare and education more effectively than Conservative. Also there was some evidence that a larger proportion of older women voted for Conservative because of feeling that that political party was more sophisticated. This links to the Rational choice model of people having different “shopping lists” based on gender and age. Where you live also has a part in what political party you vote for as it was found that the Labour vote was mainly found in urban areas in the North, Wales and Scotland whilst the Conservative vote was found more in rural areas and in the South of the country. For example, in 1997 Conservative didn’t win a single seat in Wales and Scotland. The Conservative vote was likely to be found more in the South because the people who live in rural areas or in the South (places like Surrey) were more likely to be middle-class.

Although all the studies by these sociologists seem like they have good findings, there is one problem: how do you measure class? Defining class seems to be impossible and in each study it tends to be measured differently. Some sociologists class certain workers (people who earn a lot and live lives very similar to middle class) in middle class but other sociologists say that they are still working-class. Heath, Jowell and Curtis were sociologists who used a consensus approach to class divisions. They grouped people based on economic interests into 5 groups, which were: Salariat (managers etc), Routine non-manual workers, Petty Bourgeoisie (farmers etc), Foremen and Technicians and, Manual workers. They argued that by dividing people up into these groups all studies would give better evidence to support the differences in voting behaviour and that class is still important in voting behaviour but it should be grouped differently to give better results. Class still seems to have the largest part in voting behaviour, but, like the quote says there are other factors, such as gender and ethnicity that also make a contribution to the outcome of the vote.