Voting Behaviour

When studying theories of voting behaviour, it’s helpful to think in terms of structural factors, (i.e. race, gender, class) as creating partisan alignment which influences voting behaviour in the long-term.

Then focus on factors which affect voting in specific elections (i.e. economy, appeal of policy, impact of campaigns such as the role of media and debates.

There has also been the ability to see quite a few similarities between voting behaviour in the UK and voting behaviour in the USA. Many short-term factors have been shown to become more and more important. Similarly, dealignment has been marked, and social structure can be seen to not have as much of an effect as it did in the 1960s.

Voters have also ceased to vote out of habit or tradition and no longer feel they have any allegiance to a particular party. This has caused the UK to witness its lowest turnout since 1918 in 2001 with only 59%, even in the 2010 and 2015 elections this only rose to 65% and 66%. However, in the US the 2008 elections brought the highest turnout since 1965 of 62%.

Class is still very significant in the UK but less important than in the past, but it is hard to compare UK class conceptions to the USA, as in Britain class is considered to be the main determinant in voting behaviour. There have always been deviant voters who went against the expected vote of their class, seen as if all working class voted Labour, they would always be in power due to the sheer size of that class.

In the US, the poorer people are more likely to vote Democrat while the richer vote Republican, although in recent years there has been a decrease in the strength of that correlation, where the richer are somewhat more likely to vote Democrat.

In both the UK and US there is a clear similarity between black and minority voters being more likely to choose one specific party.

In the UK, 31% of the citizens are from ethnic minorities, whereas in the Us, 29% of voters are. It appears that they are less likely to vote than whites, seen in the 2012 US election which had the highest number of black votes than before with 28% of the vote coming from them. This suggests that ethnicity has quite a large effect on an election outcome in the US.

Most non-white votes massively favour democrats, while republicans win 60% of the white vote yet still lose the election. So not only are voters increasingly influenced by race, but changing demographics also means that non-white voters make up a continually increasing share of the electorate.

White voters are still much more likely to turn up for mid-term elections, which explains the 2010 and 2014 republican success.

It could also be argued that black and Hispanic voting in both countries is a result of other factors such as class or income.

Differences in gender and their votes are much more noticeable in the US than in the UK. Women are much more likely to vote democrat in the US, and are similarly very likely to vote Labour in the UK, both parties are considered left-wing.

However, historically these results may have been different as women used to majorly vote Conservatives, but Labour worked hard to appeal to female voters in the 1990s and successfully won a large amount of their votes.

In the UK, Labour do well in Scotland, Wales and Northern rural areas while Conservatives are strong in the South and rural areas. In the US, Democrats do well on the West Coast and in the North East while Republicans do well in the South and plains States.

Usually, one party dominates in rural areas and the other in urban areas.

US has a strong two-party system while the UK has a similarly strong regional/nationalist party system.

The South of the US has been sold for Republicans sins the 1970s and the North East and California for the Democrats.

This is very significant in the US, while less so in the UK.

The rise of issues and their independent values to people from the 1980s onwards has made parties more ideological and made issues such as abortion and gay rights much more important for church goers.

In the UK, during the early 1900s, stereotypes of the Church of England, being conservatives at prayer, have diminished, although others such as Methodists are still somewhat more inclined to give their votes to Labour or Lib Dems.