Suchergebnisse

The somewhat unexpected Conservative victory in the 1992 British general election was achieved because the party won seats, especially marginal seats in some southern regions, that it could have been expected to lose, given the impacts of its recent policies there. The initial analyses reported here show that the Conservatives were 'punished' by the electorate in constituencies with high unemployment and that the main opposition party, Labour, performed particularly well in areas with high community-charge levels. The 'punishment' was insufficiently hard to lead to Conservative losses on the scale needed for a Labour victory. The regional strength developed during the 1980s was not eroded substantially enough to yield a Tory defeat.

The analyses presented in this note have extended earlier work on tactical voting in Great Britain by looking at variations between constituencies in the flow-of-the-vote matrix that are consistent with hypotheses of tactical voting. They have suggested that about 4 per cent of the British electorate voted tactically in 1983, as did nearly 6 per cent in 1987. The volume of tactical voting was greater in Conservative-held than in Labour-held seats, and in both was greater the more marginal the seat. In general, the opposition party with the greatest chance of unseating the incumbent, as suggested by the result of the previous election, gained from the tactical voting process, and there is evidence that greater campaign effort, as indexed by constituency spending, helped them in this.

Thatcherism is presented as an ideological project, seeking to reorient public attitudes in Great Britain to positions consistent with a new regime of flexible accumulation. Analysis of political attitudes, as surveyed in 1983 and 1987, suggests that the project has been much more successful among some social classes than others and in the country's southern regions than elsewhere.

Aggregate voting data suggest an increasing spatial polarization of the British electorate over the general elections of 1979, 1983, & 1987. Detailed analysis indicates the extent of the regional variation that has developed, in the context of the wider conception of a growing north-south divide. Reasons for the variation are sought in the concepts of sociotropic & egotropic voting, using data obtained from Gallup surveys conducted at the times of the three elections. Results show a growing regional disparity in levels of economic satisfaction/optimism & of party choice according to those levels. The north-south divide in voting behavior is clearly linked to a north-south divide in perceived economic prosperity. 10 Tables. AA