The social influences on voting behaviour.

[Music] Welcome to this next episode of the Politics Shed Podcast, where I am going to look at voting behaviour. Sephyllogy, the study of why people vote the way they do. Theories relating to that, and the way it might have changed over the last few years. First, ask yourself, first, if you've ever voted, or maybe for you, voting's a few years away, or maybe you've voted many times in your life. What motivated your choice when it came to voting? Were you influenced by the dislike of a particular politician? Was it the dislike of a party or their current policies? Was your dislike deeply embedded? You've always disliked that party. Or do you think a voting is the best way to achieve what's best for the country, the world, policies on the environment, or the economy? Or do you think, maybe a little more selfishly, we call it instrumental voting, what's best just for you, your family, we'll ensure your security and prosperity in the future. My grandfather, I was told, was an extreme version of the instrumental votes. He was motivated by one thing, the price of beer. If a government had taxed beer, then they would not receive his vote. He would vote for the opposition. If the opposition promised a tax beer more, then he would vote for the government. Beer and taxation on beer was the sole policy that guided his voting. My father, on the other hand, was a labour man. He described himself as a labour man. And if he met people, he would describe them as good labour people, a good labour man. He had a loathing for the conservatives and a deep, cultural, sociological, societal sense of himself as labour. It was part of his identity. He loathed most labour leaders. He saw them as traitors. He had a particular disgust for Tony Blair. But never did he miss an election. And never did he vote anything other than labour. First then, I'd like to think in general terms or broad terms about the theoretical basis for understanding voting. I saw the different perspectives that he used. Theories of voting can be divided into two or maybe three distinct viewpoints. Firstly, the sociological model. The sociological model of voting behaviour, as you might imagine, if you've studied sociology, looks at the societal influences on the way people vote. The groups they belong to, their religions, their ethnicity, their sense of social class, their identity. This is related to what's known as the party identification model, which may be somewhat similar and emphasises socialisation, particularly among children, family and influences, voting the way that people do round here, thinking oneself as, as my father did, a labour man. The sociological model and the party identification model may be part of that way of thinking about voting, which suggests that there are long term influences on the way people vote. These influences are deeply ingrained. People find these things difficult to change. They're about one's identity. Who am I? Answering the question, who am I? If part of that answer is, well, I'm a Conservative. That's going to remain strongly part of one's identity for much of one's life. It will be difficult to change. Then there's the rational choice models. Rational choice models suggest that people are more like consumers. They think about the policies of parties they weigh out the value of each and the appeal of each policy they wonder which might be best for the country, for the world. Well, they might, as more instrumental voters, the more selfish voter, what's best for them? Maybe selfish is unfair, because since it clearly can overlap, what's best for me and my family is best for me and people like me and families like me. In other words, the society I live in, so it's not maybe fair to call it selfish. The rational choice of voter may be more easily swayed by a change of policies, by dislike of a particular leader. Therefore, these might be thought to be short-term allegiances. More likely to be swayed by, well, a campaign, where campaigns may have less influence on the voter who identifies with a party. Let's turn first then to the long-term influences that deeply entrenched influences on voting behaviour, class, ethnicity, region, community and personal identity. These, it is argued, have changed considerably across the 20th century in the United Kingdom and it did in many parts of the world, particularly the United States. Broadly, the importance of class is seen to have declined. Let's start then with the idea of social class. What is a social class? What social class do you consider yourself to be? This is clearly a highly subjective and rather emotional label, working class, middle class, upper class, posh. So clearly there's an informal way of thinking about class as used in ordinary everyday language, posh, upper class, lower class, middle class. And then there were the formal classifications of class used by the National Leadership Survey, which was a classification class developed to categorise readers of periodicals after the Second World War. There's also a classification used by the Office for National Statistics. The one you'll have most commonly come across would be one that looks like A and B and C1, C2, D and E. Grade A, higher managerial administrative and professional classes, will be doctors and lawyers and judges, and senior managers, executives and CEOs. B's will be intermediate managerial posts, administrative, professional, teachers, nurses. C1s might be supervisory and are sometimes described as skilled non-manual, that's to say what the Americans call white collar workers. The work in offices, desks, administering, without getting their hands dirty as it were. C2, skilled manual workers, engineers, plumbers, d's, semi-skilled, workers who need some training, but they can pick up the job quite quickly, someone operating a till, someone driving, an uber taxi, a semi-skilled worker, and E casual workers. These classifications clearly have their faults. They're all due place to royal family in any of these. They might well be considered unemployed and low skilled in some respects. Generally, the difference between A, B, C, C1, C2, D and E is the difference between income, education level and status. Again, these can be quite subjective. However, they do reveal many, many interesting things for social scientists. And although a recent Office of National Statistics classification has tried to be more subtle, producing seven classifications and reflecting changes to a more service-based economy, you will most commonly use A, B, C, C1, C2, D and E. And again, they've remained for 30 or 40 years quite a useful way of providing insights, not only into voting behaviour, but also things like life expectancy. A's and B's live longer. D's and E's have shorter lives. But if you can show a correlation between class classifications and life expectancy, you can certainly show a correlation between class classifications and voting. Broadly, this is known as class alignment. A's and B's tend to vote conservative in the majority. With a significant minority voting labour. C1's and C2's tend to vote labour with a significant minority voting conservative. D's and E's vote more obviously and in a more pronounced way, labour with a minority voting conservative. This was particularly apparent in the 1940s and 1950s when social research showed a very strong correlation between voting and class. Broadly, the Labour Party was the party of the C2's, D's and E's and many C1's. Therefore, became a Labour strategy of the 1940s and 50s to get out the vote, working people generally voted Labour. So they lost elections when working people either swapped the vote to the conservative temporarily or did not vote. My father always used to argue that a rainy day or bad weather on election day would hurt the Labour Party more than the Conservatives because back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, Labour voters tended to not have cars or to work longer hours than therefore voting was restricted to the evening. Professionals, A and B, overwhelmingly conservative. So the Labour Party was the party of the working class and the Conservatives, the party of the upper class or the managerial class or the middle class. The theory that this has changed and changed considerably since the 1950s, particularly the 1970s and 80s, is called class "dealignment" and again it's backed up by some fairly strong evidence. The polling organisation Ipsos Moray provides some useful statistics in the election of 1964. 78% of ABs voted conservative and overwhelming majority. You could say that in 1964 the upper classes, the A's and B's voted conservative strongly. In 1964, 64% of the A and E's voted Labour. So similarly there's a really strong class divide in the 1960s in the UK. The working class vote Labour, the middle class and upper class vote conservative. By 2019 it is radically different. In 2019 according to Ipsos Moray, 45% of ABs voted conservative. And slightly less voted Labour. In other words, the ABs were fairly evenly split. And the D's, the traditional supporters of Labour, 39% voted Labour and more voted for the conservatives. The argument goes that these days voters are more issue-based, more rational choice, more short term in their commitment to a party. The long term factors of class have declined and this is class dear lineman theory. It is generally accepted that some significant class dear lineman has taken place and that class is no longer the reliable predictor of voting that it once was. However, there are some alternative views now look at them shortly. But why has this happened? Well clearly one thing that's happened is the change to the British economy since the 1950s and 60s. The deindustrialisation of the UK, the replacement of industrial jobs with mostly service working jobs, in fact the British economy has become a service economy, people are more likely to work in offices and jobs than they are to work in factory floors, docks or mines. Mining has virtually disappeared. Steel working has diminished. Manufacturers declined. Labour appealed to the working classes on the value of solidarity, union membership, protection of workers rights. There's a moment when the young MP Tony Blair in the 1980s campaigning in his sedge field constituency is said to have come across a voter as he knocked from door to door. So visiting that man's vote for Labour, the man was polishing his mondayow. The man explained that he had private health insurance, took a holiday twice a year, owned his own home, and didn't feel that he identified with class solidarity. In fact he saw himself as identifying with people who wanted to work hard and achieve as an individual, class identity was not so important to him. This type of voter became known for Labour analysts as mondayow man, a new kind of working class. Individualistic, consumer and attracted to the ideas of individual achievement. Similarly, many millions of middle class people and professionals now work in the public sector, the expanded national health service, social services, teaching, the civil service. Public service workers like these may well see the advantages or the attraction, a voting for a party that believed in government spending and the protection of the health service and well funded public services. They may feel that their work is more vulnerable, more insecure than it once had been, and therefore again might value the importance of a party that's going to intervene in the economy, to protect workers' rights. This view, or the class, the alignment view, is the dominant view, among voting behaviour analysts. However, there is an alternative view. First, the alternative view is that simply the definitions of class or themselves out of date. Classes still exist, they're just different classes these days. It may be that instead of the working class simply becoming more middle class, the old embuswarisement theory, the working class or adopting the attitudes and values of the middle class, Monday Oman, instead what has happened is that classes become more differentiated. There's still a substantial number of people working in what might be considered very distinct roles from those of others, although they find themselves, in for instance, the gig economy. The temporary economy, they no longer, the industrial working class, but they're certainly working, and they're certainly excluded from the security and the education of the middle class. Another difference in maybe education itself, this has certainly been a much more significant factor. In the United States, it's overwhelmingly obvious. The college graduates tended to vote against Trump, and those without a college degree, over well-nugly supported Trump. Trump has become a greater differentiation of voting behaviour in America than class. But of course, a significant difference in educational opportunity and educational attainment is just another form of class divide. It's also true that some of our distinctions might mask underlying class differences, ethnicities, regions and so forth. We might, for instance, observe that ethnic voters in a certain area voted overwhelmingly Labour, but not note that they're also the poorer people in that area. In other words, money, income and status are still very important as is job security. In 2019, the collapse of the Red Wall was seen as conclusive evidence of this more volatile, dear-lined class voting behaviour. However, Professor James Tilley of Oxford University argues in his book the new Politics of Class, the political exclusion of the British working class, that far from class dear-linement being the principal factor in changing voting behaviour, it is party identification, and not because class has changed, because parties themselves have changed. Party policies, politicians, rhetoric and the social composition of political elites have radically altered. These have become rather similar, and they appeal to less specific classes, and they are populated by people of similar backgrounds. They've done well at school, they've gone to university, possibly Oxbridge, they've worked in public relations, or as spads, that is to say special advises, they are career politicians, these people seem to populate both the main political parties. And they're a world away from the people who left school at 16, and are working in the gig economy. They share a general belief in the effectiveness of capitalism, of market forces, of efficiency, and a managerial approach to government. They believe that they should run things, because they will run things well. What is there in the end? That is a distinct politics of the working class. So Britain therefore appears to have followed the US down a path of working class political exclusion. The lack of choice offered by the mainstream parties has led to a huge increase in class-based abstentionism from voting. Working class people have become much less likely to vote. Much more volatile in their voting, and much more inclined to follow populist politicians like Trump or Boris Johnson. The working class in other words are desperate to find a voice that represents them. It may be that James Tillis thesis is closer to the idea of partisan, dear alignment, rather than class dear alignment. What's really happened, in other words, is the glue that fixed people habitually took parties because of their background, their class, or their region have become less secure. They become more disillusioned, more of a feeling that no one represents them at all. In the 1950s, over 40% of the electorate described themselves as strongly identifying with one particular party. That has fallen to as little as 9 or 10% now, while people still identify somewhat with a party, the powerful allegiance, such as my father exhibited, in other words, he would vote Labour under any circumstances with any leader and almost any policies as gone. Or he certainly declined hugely. So the electorate more volatile, though class may still be a major feature in this, what is after all, a far more unequal society, with lower levels of class mobility and a far greater difference between the rich and ordinary people, between the boardroom and the high street, as it were, the UK has very high levels of income inequality when compared to most other developed countries. Over the last five years up until 2022, the bottom 20% of households have seen the income fall. While the top 20% have seen the income rise substantially, the rich get richer and the poor have got poorer. The great divide in Britain then may not be so much, between the factory floor and the office, between the white collar and the blue collar. But between those who left school at the end of year 11 and those who went on into the sixth form and university, one group are destined for a world of service jobs. gig jobs, temporary work and low pay and the others mobile lives, international outlooks, moving around high education, high skill, two different worlds. Before we leave Partisan D alignment alone and move on to other long-term influences on the way people vote, an important consequence of this melting or dissolving of the glue between people and the main parties has been the rise of the smaller parties, who become much more obviously a rather more multi-party system. This has been masked by the inequalities or unfairnesses of first or disproportionality, of first past the post, but nonetheless, you can see a distinct change in the latter 20th century, an early 21st century, particularly in the devolved areas where the Scottish National Party have come to dominate Scotland. This partly encouraged by the evolution of a change voting system for the devolved assemblies, but even using first past the post in Scotland, the Scottish Nationalists have replaced Labour as the main party of Scotland. During the 1990s, the Liberal Democrats steadily revived, until in 2005, they had 62 seats, true they lost this dramatically after a rather disastrous involvement in the coalition, but there was a coalition in 2005 to 2010, and the Liberal Democrats do seem to be making something of a revival lately. The UKIP party had four million votes in 2015, the Green Party one million, again masked in its impact, to only one MP each by the first past the post system, a voting. However, with the glue dissolving, with parties and de-alignment, not only are voters more likely to make their mind up later, be more volatile, but also more likely to seek out smaller parties, parties that represent their own particular interests and particular issues, and we look at issue based voting later. Indeed, if class were less important today, we wouldn't hear so much about levelling up, they're just about managing, and targeting those left behind. In fact, targeting those left behind and seeking the voters who feel left out is a major part of the agenda of all parties in Britain, so class is still significant, though it's certainly less clear cut. Now let's talk about another long-term factor, and that's age. What's the difference between people who are older and younger in the way they vote? Well, it's always been true, or rather, it's been true during all of the 20th century when these things were measured, that older voters have leaned to the Conservatives and younger voters have leaned to the Labour Party or to the left. Winston Churchill once observed that if, when you're young, you're not a socialist, you haven't got a heart, and if you're not conservative when you're old, you haven't got a brain. This piece of wit was to observe the idea that pragmatism and practical things come with wisdom, but desire to change in all to the world and make it a better place to satisfaction with the way things are is a tendency of youth. However, age and the correlation with voting has become altogether more distinct, especially in the last couple of elections, 2017 and 2019. In 2017, 27% of people between 18 and 24 voted Conservative, and 62% of that age group, 18 to 24, voted Labour at overwhelming support for Labour among the young. That is under 24. In 2019, it was 21% voted Conservative, and 56 still an overwhelmingly larger number voted Labour in the 2019 election. In 2017, 69% of those over 70 voted Conservative, and in 2019, 67% of those over 70 voted Conservative. As people get older, they tend to vote Conservative. But at the moment, in the last couple of elections, it's been far more distinct. Why might this be? For the last couple of elections, maybe that the personality of Jeremy Corbyn, rather more radical left character, appealed to the young and didn't appeal to the old. It may be that the older voters could remember what was seen as the difficulties of the economy back in the 80s, strong unions, high inflation, for the young key policies may have been tuition fees, or the environment, or a sense that Labour's appeal to the many not the few was altogether more youthful in the gallitarian. Something different at last. However, as I said, there always has been a tendency for young people to be more radical, more accepting of change, than older people, their own property, and fear change, as their lives have become more stable, and change is more threatening. The poet William Wordsworth, an enthusiast, the outbreak of the French Revolution, deeply conservative in his old age. There are some consequences of this. David Cameron's support for the Triple Lock on Pensions, to re-same as perceived disastrous mistake in threatening the Triple Lock on Pensions, seemed to be an attack on their own most natural supporters. Pensioners vote conservative. During Brexit, again there was an overwhelming correlation between remainers who tended to be young, and Brexiters who tended to be old. The Brexiters were at least partly voting to return to a world they understood, a world before the European Union, a world with fewer changes, fewer immigrants, a world protected from the globalising changes that the EU had seemed to come to represent. Young people, more enthused as it were, by the opportunities and broader horizons of the European Union. Another effect is the changing demographics of the UK, and it indeed many countries in the Western world. There are more old people and increasingly more old people than there are younger people. Parties tend to increasingly represent the interests of older generations, protecting pensions, having no concern about passing on the costs of education to the young, hesitant to levy taxes on property. Increasingly parties have become the spokesman of the older generation, and it should be noted that older people are more likely to vote. Young people, less likely to vote. Therefore, the Conservatives have a demographic advantage of a labour, and less all those young people who voted for Corbyn, stay radical, and stay committed to labour, as they get older. We'll see. Now I'd like to talk about geographical differences, or the differences in regions of Great Britain when it comes to voting. Certainly, in most countries of the world, in the United States, for instance, it's clearly very distinct that Democrats are supported along the east and west coasts of America, and in the big cities, and the Republicans dominate the Midwest and the south. In the United Kingdom, for a long time it's been fairly straightforward that labour is supported in the inner city areas and the industrial north in Scotland and in Wales. And the Conservatives, in the rural areas, the small towns and market towns and the south-east of England, and the leafy suburbs of the cities. These are often described as the heartlands of these parties, where many safe constituencies have vote Conservative or Labour again and again. In 2019, in the north-east of England, the Conservatives got 38% of the vote and Labour 42%, northeast voting to form, a northern industrial area and voting significantly Labour. In 2019, the south-east of England voted again to form 54% Conservative and 22%. Labour, London and particularly the inner city areas of London voting significantly more Labour than Conservative, nearly half the voters of London, voting Labour 48% as opposed to 32%, voting Conservative in 2019. Region then is really quite significant, where you live, does seem to relate strongly or correlate strongly, to voting behaviour. However, along with voting the alignment, this has been challenged to some extent, particularly with the collapse of the so-called Red Wall. The Conservative Party successfully reached out to those voters in the northern areas of England, such as Bolsova, Sejfield, Ashfield and Workington. Sejfield, being Tony Blair's old seat, and held by Labour in County Durham since 1935. However, the whole concept of the Red Wall may be rather more of a media concoction than reality. Some of the so-called Red Wall seats were really rather marginal, and others had been Conservative for long periods of time prior to the Second World War. However, it's difficult to know whether region was undermined significantly the last couple of elections since they were so dominated by the Brexit debate, and this issue really cut across region as it cut across class to some degree. In many northern working class areas, Brexit was more popular than remain, and in 2019, constituencies would invoke is significantly for Brexit swung towards the Conservatives and the constituencies that had voted for remain less so or even swung towards Labour. The 2019 election in other words was dominated by an issue. One region however which shows a distinct regional identity in voting is Scotland, where Labour has been replaced by the Scottish National Party and in 2019 in the general election the Conservatives became the second largest party in Scotland after the Scottish Nationalists. The issue of independence and their left-leaning policies have pushed Labour out. Why do rural areas tend to vote Conservative? Why are farming areas in the United States more Conservative? A slower pace of life, a resistance to change, a fear of what they perceive to be the dangers of the city, a dislike of its more cosmopolitan and lacks attitude towards tradition and values, religion, all of these may play a part. But it's certainly true throughout the world that farming and the rural life appears to foster a Conservative attitude and towns and more open-minded and particularly cities and more open-minded and liberal attitude to politics and to ideology and a willing list to accept change. Certainly in the UK immigration tends to have a greater impact on cities than the countryside. An curious paradox is that immigration is feared more where there are fewer immigrants and accepted more where there are more immigrants. The experience of immigration seems to be a whole lot less fearful than the idea of immigration. What's the difference between the way men and women vote? Gender difference is in voting in other words? Well, over a long period of time there's a slight tendency it seems for women more likely to vote labour than Conservative. At least of recent decades, it may be the appeal of social services, it may be a sense that the welfare state and the health service are more important to women. That's possible. Generally, throughout the entire 20th century, women have tended to be slightly more conservative, fearing change and upheaval. However, there isn't really a great difference between the way the gender's vote. In 2019 there was virtually no difference between the way men and women voted in relation to Conservatives and Labour. However in the United States, curiously, women do significantly show more support for the Democrats, particularly Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The so-called "sockermums" or middle-class aspirational mothers who prefer to send their children out to play soccer, soccer being seen as a less dangerous, less fearful and rather more "seribor" thoughtful game than American football. The soccer mums and women do show a preference for the Democrats. In this country, labourers fail to make much of a difference to the way women vote. The most curious thing about voting in gender in the UK is the dog that didn't bark. Why don't women vote for women? Women's parties, which were seen as a likelihood that women would vote for women's issues and women would vote for women when votes for women were being campaigned for in the early 20th century, but it never happened. Women show no particular preference for voting for women. Finally, of the long-term factors on voting behaviour, or the more deeply entrenched factors that influence voting, let's consider ethnicity. Now there does seem to be a significant correlation here between ethnicity and voting. BME, or Black Minority and Ethnic Voters, tend to vote Labour. In 2019, two-thirds of such voters voted Labour and about one-fifth voted Conservative. Why might this be? Well, immigrant populations and ethnic minorities tend to live in inner city areas and city areas, so it may simply be that we're looking at the urban population which does tend to be Conservative. In cities, social services, transport, good social services are important. It might also be the case that the Conservative Party has seen as the less sympathetic party to immigration itself, recent policies such as deporting immigrants or illegal immigrants to Rwanda, the Windrush scandal, Theresa May's policy when home secretary of trying to create a hostile environment for immigrants. All of these mean that the Conservative Party are the party least favourable to immigration. This may influence some ethnic groups. It may also influence the White vote, since it is also the case that White working class have a tendency to vote Conservative, particularly in the White flight areas of Essex and the outer edges of London and the new towns. However, it's important not to generalise. In the BME community, Sikh and Hindu voters tend to vote Conservative. And Muslim voters, Labour. So there are clearly subtle cultural differences between ethnic groups. In the United States, race and voting is even more distinct. With African Americans being one of the most loyal voters in the world, with 80 and 90 percent support for the Democrats, Hispanic voters similarly tend to vote Democrat. Although, as Ronald Reagan observed that Hispanics are Republicans but don't yet know it, there's an increasing tendency for Hispanics to vote Republican, since they share similar social values and opposition to abortion, a resistance to social attitudes such as gay marriage. Overall, it is difficult to disentangle ethnicity and voting from age, region and class. And certainly levels of income and poverty. That concludes this talk on the social factors that influence voting, or the long term factors that they're sometimes known. In the next podcast, I'm going to look at the shorter term factors, such as rational choice voting and issue voting. If you'd like to support your study here, or find more information on the things I've been talking about, follow the links below to the Politics Shed website. Thank you.