Voting Patterns

1
Voting Patterns

• Social Class as a Factor of Influence

2
Traditional Political Views

• Social class dominated voting behaviour until the
  1970s
• Conservatives voted for by mainly upper class
  and upper middle class.
• Labour voted for by mainly lower middle class
  and working class.
• Class is the basis of British party politics
  all else is embellishment and detail. P.J Pulzer
  - 1967

3
Changing Views

• From the 1970s onwards voting behaviour changed.
  People were no longer loyal to a particular party
  because of their class.
• This was helped by the de-alignment of the class
  system.
• Voters were showing political parties that they
  would have to do their job properly and to the
  standard that the electorate expected otherwise
  the loyalties of the voters could change.

4
Changing Views

• In 1992 Labour began to close the gap between
  them and the Conservative party. The seat
  difference leapt from 11.7 to 7.1.
• In 1997 the upper middle class gave more support
  to Labour than to Conservative and less than 50
  of upper class citizens voted Conservative.
• Labour, however, lost publicity within the
  working class.

? Labour win in 1997
5
Changing Views

• Labour modernised and began to appeal to more
  than just the working class.
• This was due to New Labour entering the scene.
• New Labour introduced ideas to appeal to all
  classes, such as a National Minimum Wage to
  appeal to working class citizens but also a
  pledge not to raise income tax to appeal to the
  middle class.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of the Labour party
6
Modern Day

• Nowadays, there is a lot of diversity in which
  social class people view themselves in.
• Some people who are working class, expected to
  vote Labour, believe themselves to be middle
  class and so vote Conservative and vice versa.
• The Conservative and Labour parties have,
  however, been the two political parties to hold
  power over Britains government for decades and
  things are likely to stay that way for years to
  come.
• However, in the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish
  National Party (SNP) have support from the
  Scottish people in a diversity of classes.