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Partisanship and Policy Choice: Issue Preferences in the British Electorate, February 1974

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

James E. Alt ,
Bo Särlvik  and
Ivor Crewe
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Extract

Inherent in many models of voting, as well as in defences of representative democracy, is the assumption that the voting public has knowledge of and opinions about public policy issues. In recent years in the United States a stream of scholarly articles has been devoted to assessing not just the extent to which issue knowledge and opinions exist but also the extent to which they influence electoral decisions. This new literature suggests that issue-related perceptions and attitudes are rather more important in the electoral process than earlier studies had suggested. This increased focus on issues appears to reflect both methodological changes in the analysis of them and also real changes in the importance of policy issues in American electoral politics. By contrast, students of British electoral behaviour have made few systematic attempts to assess the fit between popular attitudes and knowledge of party policy positions on issues. Instead, the conventional wisdom is repeated which holds that ‘a majority of people are either ignorant of, or disagree with, the specific policies of the party they support’. The implication of this seems to be that electors' familiarity with issues is so low, and the holding of policy attitudes by them so uncommon, that rigorous analysis of issues in the context of electoral politics is unnecessary.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1976 , pp. 273 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Most of the important earlier work is cited in Kessel, John H., ‘Comment: the Issues in Issue Voting’, American Political Science Review, LXVI (1972), 459–65.Google Scholar Two particularly useful papers published since then are Kelley, Stanley Jr., and Mirer, Thad W., ‘The Simple Act of Voting’, American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 572–91Google Scholar, and Jackson, John E., ‘Issues, Party Choices, and Presidential Votes’, American Journal of Political Science, XIX (1975), 161–85.Google Scholar

2 For instance, Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar appears to suggest that in the long term attitudes and perceptions are subordinate to more enduring partisan commitments.

3 Butler, David and Kavanagh, Dennis, The British General Election of February 1974 (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Benney, M. and Geiss, P., ‘Social Class and Politics in Greenwich’, British Journal of Sociology, 1 (1950), 320–3Google Scholar, and Milne, R. and Mackenzie, H., Straight Fight (London: The Hansard Society, 1954), pp. 108–12.Google Scholar This approach is intriguing, though hardly developed. One flaw lies in the choice of propositions: one of Milne and Mackenzie's – ‘centralised government planning is necessary to preserve full employment’ – is more a Labour proposition by virtue of the evocative adjectives and the (implicit) goal of full employment than by being a proposition the truth of which Conservatives would in any sense have disputed, even in 1951. Moreover, no attempt is made to clarify or control the different amounts of exposure these propositions may have had, or the importance electors attached to them.

6 The problem of meaningful opinions is discussed by Butler and Stokes. Using the example of nationalization of industry, they conclude that while ‘there was virtually no confusion about which party was more likely to go in for further nationalization…this…perception contrasts sharply with the changeability of attitude towards the merits of nationalization… [T]he circulation of opinion is substantially due to mere uncertainty of response and not to genuine attitude change’ (Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, p. 283Google Scholar). This shatters ‘any idea that the bulk of electors hold to fixed views’, and this in turn limits any possible impact of policy-defined issues. On the other hand, not all opinions which change are therefore meaningless, and the focus on opinions unchanged in four waves of interviews seems unduly hard on those people who may genuinely have changed their minds. The evidence they present could suggest that about two-thirds of the electorate held non-random opinions on nationalization in the period under study. The estimated two-thirds comprise: (a) those who held the same view on four occasions, 43 per cent; (b) three-fourths of those who held the same opinion three times and said ‘don't know’ the other time (fatigue?), 7 per cent; (c) all those who, having gone from one side to the other, reasserted their new opinion at least once without reverting to the old view, or saying ‘don't know’, 12 percent; (d) half of those who held the same view in 1963–64–66 and the other view in 1970 (since we lack the information necessary to allocate them to (c) above, 3 per cent: total non-random opinions, 65 per cent. The assumptions made in the above classification do not seem over-generous. The data are from Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, Table 13.3.Google Scholar

7 These views are discussed in Prothro, James W., ‘Explaining the Vote’ in Kovenock, D. M., Prothro, J. W. and associates. Explaining the Vote: Presidential Choices in the Nation and the States, 1968 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Institute for Research in Social Science, 1973), Chap. 1.Google Scholar The second view can be consistent with any level of issue awareness in the electorate; the first view requires awareness and accurate perceptions as preconditions.

8 See Jackson, , ‘Issues’, for evidence of these simultaneous relationships.Google Scholar

9 And in those cases a single cross-section survey cannot distinguish between those processes – evaluation, persuasion by politicians, or rationalization of fixed prior party preference – which might underlie the achieved consistency between attitude, perception and preference. See Brody, Richard and Page, Benjamin, ‘Comment: The Assessment of Policy Voting’, American Political Science Review, LXVI (1972), 450–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 The response alternatives used to ascertain opinions were presented to respondents. For each issue, they were as follows. Common Market: (1) it is all right for Britain to stay in the Common Market on the present terms; (2) Britain must stay in the Common Market but should try hard to change the terms; (3) Britain must change the terms and should leave the Common Market unless they improve; (4) Britain should get out of the Common Market no matter what. Nationalization: (1) a lot more industries should be nationalized; (2) only a few more industries should be nationalized; (3) no more industries should be nationalized, but industries that are now nationalized should stay nationalized; (4) some of the industries that are now nationalized should become private companies. Social Services: (1) social services and benefits have gone much too far and should be cut back a lot; (2) social services and benefits have gone somewhat too far and should be cut back a bit; (3) social services and benefits should stay as they are; (4) more social services and benefits are needed.

11 Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, pp. 309–10.Google Scholar For a discussion of this issue in recent campaigns, see Särlvik, Bo, Crewe, Ivor, Alt, James and Fox, Anthony, ‘Britain's Membership of the EEC; A Profile of Electoral Opinions in the Spring of 1974’, European Journal of Political Research, IV (1976), 83–113.Google Scholar

12 See Barry, E. E., Nationalisation in British Politics (London: Cape, 1965), passim.Google Scholar

13 The interviews obtained from 2,462 registered electors comprise the British Election Study February 1974 cross-section sample. Fieldwork was conducted by the British Market Research Bureau in March–May 1974.

14 Both importance and preference were asked immediately after the issue perceptions. The question texts were: When you are deciding about voting, how important was the question of (Britain and the Common Market) (Nationalization) (Social services and benefits) – the most important single thing, fairly important, or not very important? And when it comes to (Britain and the Common Market) (Nationalization) (Social services and benefits), do you prefer any of the parties? If yes, which party?

15 ‘No preference’ amalgamates all such answers as ‘don't know’, ‘no’, ‘all the same’.etc., to the preference question.

16 Throughout, ‘more important’ amalgamates the responses ‘most’ and ‘fairly’ important to the importance question.

17 This scarcity of preferences for the Liberals is the reason for excluding them from the subsequent analysis.

18 This varies from 70 per cent among very strong Conservatives on social services to 86 per cent among the same group on nationalization. Party identification is composed of direction – Conservative, Labour, Liberal – taken from the answers to: Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as Conservative, Labour, Liberal or what? (If no party named: Do you generally think of yourself as a little closer to one of the parties than the others? If yes, which party?) Direction of identification is modified by strength: would you call yourself very strong (party chosen), fairly strong, or not very strong? Current controversies about the concepts are reviewed in Budge, I., Crewe, I. and Farlie, D., eds., Party Identification and Beyond (London: Wiley, forthcoming).Google Scholar

19 There is also a slight tendency for stronger identifiers to see each issue as more important, as can be seen from the percentage bases in Table 2. This does not alter the relationship being discussed.

20 Again, the Liberals are excluded. In fact the largest single category of response about the Liberal party's position on the Common Market is ‘don't know’ (35 per cent) in spite of the fact that the Liberal party alone has maintained its pro-entry position on the Common Market for the last ten years.

21 Some of the problem disappears if this position, ‘social services stay as they are’, is interpreted as defending the welfare state against attack. The plausibility of this interpretation is demonstrated later in this section.

22 This includes those saying ‘don't know’.

23 This tendency towards ‘negative projection’ of the other party has been commented on in the literature. See Page, Benjamin and Brody, Richard, ‘Policy Voting and the Electoral Process: The Vietnam War Issue’, American Political Science Review, LXVI (1972), 979–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For instance, 84 per cent of very strong Conservatives see Labour as standing for ‘a lot more’ nationalization, as against 77 per cent of other Conservative identifiers (and only 50 per cent of Labour identifiers). While the inter-party differences occur on each issue, the relationship with strength of party identification is often absent.

24 There is some evidence of distortion – i.e. invention of a party position in harmony with the partisan identifier's own position. The clearest cases of this ‘harmonization’ of positions occur between two positions which could both arguably be assigned to a party. Serious distortions appear confined to very small portions of the electorate. More evidence for this is given in the rest of this section.

25 In terms of proportions of the electorate, 51 per cent have correct perceptions on all three issues (in the sense of Table 4), and a further 25 per cent have two perceptions correct and one issue response of ‘don't know’ or ‘no difference’. Only 24 per cent of the electorate have fewer accurate perceptions than this (based on 2,409 respondents).

26 This relationship is even true for those preferring the Liberals.

27 These proportions are arrived at using the percentage bases given in Table 6.

28 The preferences of those with no party identification do not differ significantly from the distribution shown in Table 5(a), in which they are subsumed. Among non-identifiers, 46 per cent prefer the party they place closer, 6 per cent prefer the other, and 48 per cent express no preference. Where the parties are ‘equidistant’, 73 per cent have no preference. (Base = 267; calculations relate only to preferences for and placements of the major parties.) It should also be added that the proportion of partisan identifiers who prefer the party which is both further away and not the one with which they identify is just over 1 per cent.

29 More importance attached to issues produces more preferences, and makes the relationship in Table 6 even clearer. In particular, the proportion of not very strong identifiers preferring the closer party (when it is not the one with which they identify) rises from 29 per cent where the issue is less important to 46 per cent where it is more important. In the same circumstances the proportion of not very strong identifiers preferring the party identified with the more proximate one rises from 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

30 A comparable finding is reported in Repass, David, ‘Issue Salience and Party Choice’, American Political Science Review, LXV (1971), 389–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Repass, , ‘Issue Salience’, p. 399.Google Scholar

32 Crewe, Ivor, Alt, James and Särlvik, Bo, ‘The Erosion of Partisanship, 1964–1975’, paper presented to the Political Studies Association annual conference, Nottingham, 03 1976.Google Scholar