Oliver Heath

The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left Behind: An Aggregate-level Analysis of the Result

Why did Britain vote for Brexit? What was the relative importance of factors such as education, age, immigration and ethnic diversity? And to what extent did the pattern of public support for Brexit across the country match the pattern of public support in earlier years for eurosceptic parties, notably the UK Independence Party (UKIP)? In this article we draw on aggregate-level data to conduct an initial exploration of the 2016 referendum vote. First, we find that turnout was generally higher in more pro-Leave areas. Second, we find that public support for Leave closely mapped past support for UKIP. And third, we find that support for Leave was more polarised along education lines than support for UKIP ever was. The implication of this finding is that support for euroscepticism has both widened and narrowed—it is now more widespread across Britain but it is also more socially distinctive.

Policy Representation, Social Representation and Class Voting in Britain

Why does the strength of class voting vary over time? Recent research has emphasized factors related to the structure of political choice at the party level. This article examines different aspects of this choice, and investigates whether voters are more likely to respond to the social or policy cues that parties send voters. The results from the British context suggest that the former are more important than the latter. The central implication of this finding is that social representation matters, and that the social background of political representatives influences how voters relate to political parties.

The 2017 General Election, Brexit and the Return to Two‐Party Politics: An Aggregate‐Level Analysis of the Result

The outcome of the 2017 general election—a hung parliament—defied most predictions. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data to conduct an initial exploration of the vote. What was the impact of Brexit on the 2017 general election result? What difference did the collapse of UKIP make? And what was the relative importance of factors such as turnout, education, age and ethnic diversity on support for the two main parties? First, we find that turnout was generally higher in more pro-remain areas, and places with high concentrations of young people, ethnic minorities and university graduates. Second, we find that the Conservatives made gains in the sort of places that had previously backed Brexit and previously voted for UKIP. But, third, we find that the gains the Conservatives made from the electoral decline of UKIP were offset by losses in the sort of places that had previously supported the Conservatives, particularly areas in southern England with larger numbers of graduates. The implication of these findings is that while a Brexit effect contributed to a ‘realignment on the right’, with the Conservative strategy appealing to people in places that had previously voted for UKIP, this strategy was not without an electoral cost, and appears to have hurt the party in more middle class areas.

Reputations and Research Quality in British Political Science: The Importance of Journal and Publisher Rankings in the 2008 RAE

Research Highlights and Abstract The article seeks to make a contribution in the following areas: Departments that submitted a large proportion of books published with a top university press tended to do much better in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), especially in respect of their 4* rating. Departments that submitted large numbers of top-10 journal articles as a proportion of their outputs tended to get higher 4* ratings than departments that submitted only a few. Departments that had a member of staff on the RAE sub-panel saw their 4* rating jump considerably, all other things being equal, suggesting inadequate communication by the sub-panel of its working methods and criteria. The RAE sub-panels judgements about research quality broadly reflected the judgements of the profession. This article analyses the results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It demonstrates that the reputations of political science journals and scholarly publishers can explain the performance of institutions submitted to the RAEs Politics and International Studies sub-panel, and that there were also clear relationships between types of output and research quality. Outputs in top journals and with top presses were strongly associated with 4* quality and research excellence. Moreover, press and journal reputations appeared to have a greater impact than the type of publication. These findings should encourage policy makers to consider more cost-effective and efficient ways of evaluating research.

The Structure of Party-Organization Linkages and the Electoral Strength of Cleavages in Italy, 1963–2008

No consensus exists on the causal mechanisms underpinning declining voting based on social cleavages – religion and class – in Europe. Previous research has emphasized two main factors: social change within the electorate (bottom-up) and parties’ policy polarization (top-down). This article presents a third level of analysis that links parties and cleavage-related social organizations, producing a factor capable of reinforcing group identity and interest representation. This hypothesis was tested for Italy in 1968–2008, where changes in the party system provided a natural experiment to assess the impact of changing structural alternatives at the party–organizational level. The level of cleavage voting in Italy then responded primarily to changes in the structure of party–organization linkages, while the impact of policy mobilization and social change was negligible.

Policy Alienation, Social Alienation and Working-Class Abstention in Britain, 1964–2010

This article presents an examination of class-based inequalities in turnout at British elections. These inequalities have substantially grown, and the class divide in participation has become greater than the class divide in vote choice between the two main parties. To account for class inequalities in turnout three main hypotheses – to do with policy indifference, policy alienation and social alienation – are tested. The results from the British context suggest that the social background of political representatives influences the ways in which voters participate in the political process, and that the decline in proportion of elected representatives from working-class backgrounds is strongly associated with the rise of working-class abstention.

Does choice deliver? Public satisfaction with the health service

We examine how much the public say they want choice in the provision of public services, and how far perceptions of the amount of choice they feel they should and do have are related to satisfaction with public services. Our findings cast critical light on some of the claims made by both opponents and advocates of choice about the value the public place on choice. The claim of opponents that the public do not want choice is not supported. Citizens say they want choice and the more they say they want it the less satisfied they are with NHS hospital services. However, the claim that citizens value choice for its own sake is also not supported. Public perceptions of how much choice people have over which hospital they attend are not associated with service satisfaction once we take into account perceptions of how much patients are involved in their treatment.

The BJP's return to power: mobilisation, conversion and vote swing in the 2014 Indian elections

Using constituency-level data, the article examines the BJPs vote swing at the State and Constituency level in India. Drawing on theories of electoral realignment, I examine the BJPs performance at the constituency level and investigate the extent to which the party drew voters from other parties (particularly Congress), mobilised new voters (via increased turnout), and appealed to the newly enfranchised (via increases in the size of the electoral roll). The results of the analysis show that the key to the BJPs success was its ability to mobilise new voters in places where it had previously not fared so well.

Institutional Performance and Vote Buying in India

Inefficient and corrupt institutions provide an incentive for citizens to focus on short causal chains, which prize instant benefits from direct, clientelist exchanges over the promise of uncertain and distant programmatic rewards. Drawing on a tightly controlled comparison arising from the bifurcation of a state within the Indian federal system into two units that have demonstrated marked differences in institutional development post division, and a survey administered across the new state boundary, we show that citizens are more responsive to small inducements in weak institutional settings where the delivery of basic goods by the state is less certain, but that these institutional effects weaken as the size of the inducement increases.

Do women vote for women candidates? Attitudes towards descriptive representation and voting behaviour in the 2010 British election

Abstract: Research on the effect of candidate sex on voting behaviour has found mixed results. In some countries, in some elections, candidate sex has been found to influence voting behaviour but the mechanisms underpinning this relationship are not fully understood. We argue that in the British context the issue of candidate sex has become politicised by party strategies relating to the selection of women candidates. Controversy over mechanisms to improve womens representation raises the salience of candidate sex in the public mind and divides opinion on whether women better represent womens interests. Accordingly, British Conservative party leader David Camerons attempts to improve the representation of women in the Parliamentary Conservative party in 2010 made the issue of candidate sex particularly electorally salient and also made it the first election where both main parties fielded substantial numbers of women candidates in winnable seats. Given this increase in the supply and salience of women candidates, 2010 provides a unique opportunity in the British case to model the effect of candidate sex on vote choice. We show that attitudes towards the descriptive representation of women had a significant impact on whether women supported women candidates in 2010.