Anthony Heath

Between first and second order: a comparison of voting behaviour in european and local elections in britain

In Britain, both local elections and European elections can be regarded as second-order. However, voters believe that even less is at stake in European elections than in local elections, and their behaviour is congruent with this: voters are more likely to turn out in local elections, they are more likely to ‘split their ticket’ they are more likely to report that they vote on issues specific to the second-order arena. Logistic regression of party choices in the local, European and national contexts confirms this. National considerations played less part in the local election and there was some evidence that voters were influenced by the record of the locally-incumbent party. It appears that voting in the European elections has more of an expressive character, and is less instrumental than that in either local or national elections.

Multilevel models for repeated binary outcomes: attitudes and voting over the electoral cycle

Models for fitting longitudinal binary responses are explored by using a panel study of voting intentions. A standard multilevel repeated measures logistic model is shown to be inadequate owing to a substantial proportion of respondents who maintain a constant response over time. A multivariate binary response model is shown to be a better fit to the data.

Trendless Fluctuation: a Reply to Crewe

There must be two books bearing the title How Britain Votes. One of them, an ingenious but implausible book which is marred by logical, conceptual and measurement flaws, was reviewed by Ivor Crewe in the December 1986 issue of Political Studies.’ The other version of the book, the one we wrote in 1985, is doubtless also flawed in many respects, but happily not in the way eagerly attacked by Crewe. Indeed, following Crewe’s own suggestions, we report in this paper new evidence which substantially strengthens our original conclusions. We are grateful to Crewe for providing us with this opportunity to consolidate our argument. Crewe’s vigorous but extravagant critique is actually confined to one chapter of How Britain Votes-the chapter on class dealignment (Chapter 3). Such a narrow focus might have been expected to lead to well-targeted criticism. But alas, Crewe’s target must have been Chapter 3 of that other offending book, not ours. Otherwise he would surely have noticed and understood the statistical

The measurement of left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values: A comparison of balanced and unbalanced scales

In this paper we compare the performance of balanced and unbalanced Likert scales of two core dimensions of political attitudes: left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values. The balanced scales control for the effects of acquiescence response sets, whereas the unbalanced scales do not. Using data from two panel surveys, balanced and unbalanced scales are compared for reliability, stability and validity both with each other, and with other measures of political ideology and values (left-right self-placement and postmaterialism). Both balanced and unbalanced versions of the left-right and libertarian-authoritarian Likert scales are found to be more stable and strongly associated with social characteristics than are the other measures. The unbalanced scales have slightly higher reliability than the balanced scales; they are also orthogonal, whereas balanced left-right and libertarian-authoritarian scales are moderately correlated. Unbalanced scales also display a slightly stronger relationship with social characteristics, but they do not differ in their pattern of association with political preferences. Differences between balanced and unbalanced scales are attributed to the effects of acquiescence bias. This needs to be considered when using the scales for substantive analyses, but its effects are not problematic.

Husbands' and Wives' Voting Behaviour in Britain: Class-dependent Mutual Influence of Spouses*

We investigate the relative impact of respondents and spouses class on voting behaviour using logistic diagonal reference models. We test several hypotheses with data from the British Election Surveys of 1974, 1979, 1983 and 1987. We find that there are still differences between men and women in the extent to which their own class positions account for the way they vote, women being more influenced by their partners class position than are men. We also find that, although men have in general a higher class position, a class dominance model cannot account for the greater influence of husbands than of wives. Our results do however modify the conventional approach to class in important respects. We find significant interaction effects, women in the higher and lower service class and women in blue-collar occupations behaving much like men: that is, they take more account of their own class than of their partners. Conversely, women in the petty bourgeoisie and in the routine nonmanual class take relatively little account of their own class positions; their behaviour is more in line with the conventional assumption of male dominance. Finally, no trends over time, whether towards indi vidualism, feminism or sharing, could be detected.

Modelling trends in the class/party relationship 1964–87

Abstract Discussions of the nature of changes in the class/party association have focused on the theses of ‘trendless fluctuation’ and gradual decline in the class basis of British politics. This paper advances this debate by demonstrating that log-linear modelling can be used to test for more complex patterns of change over the period in question. In an analysis of the class/party association over eight elections both the trendless fluctuation and the gradual change thesis are shown not to fit the data particularly well. Far better fits are obtained by modelling the effects of political rather than sociological influences. Thus incumbency is shown to have a considerable impact on the class basis of support for the parties. Labour Party incumbency is shown to have an especially large effect in reducing the working class basis of support for the party. The paper both elaborates upon the methodological advantages of log-linear modelling and argues for new approaches to understanding the class/party relationship.

British National Sentiment

There has been extensive research on Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism but little on British nationalism. Analysis of the British electorate shows that British nationalist sentiments cannotn be reduced to the conventional left–right and libertarian–authoritarian value dimensions, and constitute a distinct normative dimension in their own right. They are related to attitudes towards Europe, nuclear defence, Scottish devolution and Irish unification. Although by no means as important as the left–right dimension, they are at least as important in contemporary voting behaviour as the libertarian–authoritarian dimension.

The demise of party identification theory

Abstract The theory of party identification has lost favour in recent years, while theories of issue voting have come into prominence. Analysis of the 1983 British General Election Study and of the 1983–1987 Panel Study suggests that the decline in the explanatory power of party identification theory may be relatively small. An assessment of the changing explanatory power of issue-voting theory is more difficult because of changes in question-wording and coverage of issues in the election studies. There are also doubts about the reliability of the conventional measures of attitudes towards specific political issues although the evidence of the 1983–1987 Panel Study indicates that respondents general political principles are as stable over time as their party identifications.

Social Work and the Education of Children in Foster Care.

To what extent should social workers advocate the educational needs of children and young people in foster care? Jane Aldgate, Anthony Heath, Matthew Colton and Michael Simm present the findings of a recent study.

Multilevel analysis of the changing relationship between class and party in Britain 1964–1992

Previous analyses of the changing relationship between class and vote in Britain have assumed that the British Election Surveys constitute simple random samples. In fact, they are all clustered samples, and the number of sampling points has varied substantially over time. The paper uses the statistical technique of multi-level modelling to investigate the effects of this clustering and compares the results with those obtained with single-level logistic models. In general, the multilevel and single-level models lead to similar conclusions about the changing relation between class and vote; they both show evidence of a change in the class/vote relationship over time. However, the multilevel models also show that, while the clustering does not affect conclusions about the class dealignment debate, there are other important substantive findings which emerge from the multilevel approach. First, there is clear evidence of substantial constituency differences in the intercepts; that is, individuals had very different propensities to vote Conservative in different constituencies. Second, there were also significant constituency differences in class voting, that is, constituencies seemed to vary in their level of class polarization.