Does social class affect voting behaviour in Britain?

This data report will try to answer positively or negatively the question of whether people who are part of a certain social class have a certain voting behaviour due to this. Using certain theories of voting such as the social determinism and the Michigan theory as well as other researched schemes backed up by data from the 2005 survey, I will attempt to get an answer to the research question and analyse the findings in the context.

According to Harrop and Miller (1987, pp.183) the concept of class is defined differently by sociologists and political analysts. Therefore we cannot find a generalised definition of this concept. Considering this fact we can take the definitions of two iconic figures Max Weber and Karl Marx as starting point. Max Weber considers that class is consistent of people who due to their labour market position tend to share similar life chances, while Karl Marx defines classes in capitalist society by means of production. Although Weber only provides a test by which classes can be identified, Marx categorises them clearly. Marxs categorisation includes the bourgeoisie which is comprised by the owners of the product means and the proletariat- the class that had to sell its labour in order to survive.

Agreeing with the idea that people can be categorized in terms of occupation, we can then consider this as a good way of detecting influence of class on voting. Thus emphasis can be put on how people see themselves as being part of a class or another. This is thought to be a way in which one can observe stronger association with party choice. Therefore the first hypothesis is that class can be shown by the type of work a person is doing or how a person choses his class and this would reflect on how people vote. What I expect to find after taking as an independent variable the type of work and as a dependent variable the party they voted for, is a great number of the ones that consider themselves as working class to vote for Labour and a majority of those who consider themselves middle class to vote for the Conservative party. In order to test this hypothesis I have generated the following:

Petrescu Andreea Ioana

No.1

As we can see in this pie chart most of the people asked describe themselves as identifying with a certain party. Although it is confirmed by class consciousness surveys that class awareness is still high in Britain as seen here, and that most people will describe themselves in class terms when asked in a survey, only a minority of them believe that class barriers are as strong as they were (1987, Harrop and Miller,pp.186). We can correlate these data with the process called by Butler and Stokes as socialisation. This process is translated in the fact that everyone gains a vast volume of information as a consequence of interactions within families, friends, neighbours, colleagues and so on. According to Butler and Stokes, most people learned to associate the different parties with classes and most adopted their parents party (2007, Denver,D.,pp.49). This is partly true today as approximately 29% of the people who have taken part in the BES 2005 survey have answered yes regarding if they consider themselves as supporters of a certain party and as we can see in the crosstab generated below in the SPSS programme that they are partly separated in two: supporters of Labour Party and Conservative Party. These are the two large blocs that Butler and Stokes were talking about and the separation of which was produced between 1950 and 1970. This is talked about as being the era of Alignment, and as we can see this division is still going on today but on a smaller scale than before.

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No.2

Source: BES 2005 cross-section survey Another hypothesis would be to also look at peoples incomes and class them by that and then see if it is still true that people with low incomes vote in majority for Labour and people with higher incomes vote Conservative. In order to test this hypothesis we would take peoples incomes as an independent variable and the party they vote for as a dependent one. Therefore if class is still as important as it was in the 1950-1970 it would theoretically have to have an effect on any other variable when class was controlled. Because, according to the Alford index, a very important way of calculating the extent of class voting, Britain was amongst the top countries in which voting by class had a high figure but which is in a current decline(1987,Harrop and Miller). This could be explained by the fact that in Britain, class matters electorally much more than in other countries but not because there is a great conflict between classes but because other cleavages are quite weak for example the religious cleavages since most of the country is protestant. Though if we regard the extremes in the crosstab below, we can observe that people with a very low income, have voted Labour and those with higher than 70,000 have voted Conservatives more. But if we look at the other 2 income ranges we can see an irregularity in the fact that 40% of the 5,000-30,000 range which could be generally classed as working class voted Labour but also 37% of the middle higher class ranged between 30,000-70,000 has voted the left-wing party. Therefore the class cleavages have not influenced enough the votes. This can also be explained by a reorientation from Conservatives to Labour and from Labour to Liberal Democrats which makes the balance more inclined towards Labour, making class less relevant in the voting process.

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No.3 Annual Household Income Party Voted For General Election Labour Count less than 5,0015000 30,000 33 482 61,8% 41,9% 304 54,8% 26,4% 233 56,8% 20,3% 131 67,9% 11,4% 30,00170,000 233 29,9% 37,0% 199 36% 31,6% 147 35,8% 23,4% 50 25,7% 8,0% 70,000 or more 32 4,1% 32,7% 40 7,2% 40,8% 19 4,6% 19,3% 7 3,6% 7,2% Total 780 100,0% 40,3% 554 100% 28,6% 410 100% 21,2% 193 100% 10%

% within Party Voted 4,2% For General Election % within Annual Household Income Conservatives 55,0%

Count 11 % within Party Voted 2,0% For General Election % within Annual 18,3% Household Income Count 11 % within Party Voted 2,7% For General Election % within Annual 18,3% Household Income Count 5 % within Party Voted 2,6% For General Election % within Annual Household Income 8,3

Liberal-Democrats

Others

Total

Count

60

1150 59,4% 100,0%

629 32,5% 100,0%

98 5,1% 100,0%

1937 100,0% 100,0%

% within Party Voted 3,1% For General Election % within Annual Household Income Source: BES2005 cross-section survey 100,0%

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No.4

600 500 400 <5000

Annual Household Income

Count

300 200 100 0 Labour Conservatives Liberal Democrats Others

5001-30,000 30,001-70,000 >70,000

Party Voted For General Election

Source: Data from BES 2005 cross-section survey Looking at this bar chart of the BES 2005, we can see the same results, that people in working class have voted more Labour. This bar chart emphasises the amount of people that have voted Labour from the total that have answered these survey questions. Another important variable that in my opinion can help in defining class is education because in this we can also see familys influence on the individual, the wealth of the parents who is also reflected in this as a well-educated and rich, income and occupation. Education has always been in a very tight relation with social class. This was mostly due to the fact that wealthy families, which were usually integrated in the bourgeoisie class, these were capable to send their children to school and get them properly educated, whereas poor families, classed as manual workers or proletariat did not have the money to keep their children in school or they had a family tradition which made the need for school as useless because they learned all they needed from the family trough the tradition of passing the craft from one generation to the other. Nowadays, as we can see in the table below, it is much harder to predict if a person is part of a certain social class relating to its education and the party it would vote for considering that.

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No.5
Highest Educational Qualification Party Voted For General Election Higher Education Labour Count % within Party Voted For General Election % within Highest Educational Qualification Conservatives and Others Count % within Party Voted For General Election % within Highest Educational Qualification Total Count % within Party Voted For General Election % within Highest Educational Qualification 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 3679 54,8% 980 14,6% 987 14,7% 675 10,1% 395 5,9% 6716 100,0% 63,6% 59,5% 63,5% 53,5% 81,5% 63,0% 2341 55,3% 583 13,8% 627 14,8% 361 8,5% 322 7,6% 4234 100,0% 36,4% 40,5% 36,5% 46,5% 18,5% 37,0% 1338 53,9% Medium Education 397 16,0% Low Education 360 14,5% Lower Medium 314 12,7% Other technical, professional education 73 2,9% Total 2482 100,0%

Source: BES 2005 cross-section survey Looking at the statistical table above it can be observe that there is a comparable percentage of each education scope that has voted Labour. This demonstrates what I have stated above, which is that due to wider access to education, the difference between the highly educated people and the lower educated cannot be seen any more in voting behaviour. I have chosen these hypotheses because in my opinion they are the most representative and have the most relevance in the issue in question. Of course other variables are also important when explaining how class affects peoples votes. Therefore, in my opinion variables such as age and what neighbourhood people live are very important in determining voters choices. Although the most important one I would say is the social environment they live in and where they grew up, if their parents and family had strong political opinions. Of course it is not necessary for a person to be totally influenced by this but I believe this has a great deal of influence amongst the others enumerated already. I sustain this idea by referring to the Michigan theory which demonstrates that long-term factors are the most important in determining peoples choices in our case party choices that people make. Also, interaction between the voters long-term party identification and various short-term influences such as: current political issues which concern the voter, campaign events, the personalities of party leaders or candidates and the tactical situation in the local constituencies (2007,Denver, pp. 20-21) can influence on a certain level. There is also the situation where identifying with a party is not the same as voting for it. This happens when the party the voter usually sustains has a very low chance of winning. Petrescu Andreea Ioana

No.6 Annual Household Income Have Educational Qualification Yes Count % within Have Educational Qualification less than 5,0015000 30,000 68 0,7% 2368 24,2% 30,00170,000 5712 58,3% 70,000 or more Total 1651 16,8% 9799 100,0%

% within Annual 47,9% Household Income No Count % within Have Educational Qualification 74 3,2%

61,4% 1486 63,4%

89,2% 693 29,6%

94,8% 91 3,9%

80,7% 2344 100,0%

Total

% within Annual 52,1% Household Income Count 142 % within Have Educational Qualification 1,2%

38,6% 3854 31,7%

10,8% 6405 52,7%

5,2% 1742 14,3%

19,3% 12143 100,0%

% within Annual 100,0% Household Income Source: BES 2005 cross-section survey

100,0%

100,0%

100,0%

100,0%

This table shows that 89% of those who have an income of more that 30,000 which we would normally class as upper middle-class has educational qualification this representing almost half of the people interviewed. This data can be correlated with the data in the table No.5 but also No.3. This can prove again that weather you have been raised in a low income family with Labour principles and now you even though having achieved yourself, one will still vote for the same party out of habit and maybe thinking this is the mentality I was raised in and know as the straight one. Thus, it can be taken as a possible explanation of the great number of the electorate voting labour and considering themselves as labour supporters while having medium towards high incomes.

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Age and generation can have an influence on how interested people are in politics like also discussed by Denver (2007,pp. 203). For example old people can be more interested in politics as they have more time on their hand whereas young people might not be interested in politics because they have other things to do, they just began living their lives. Or there can be the hypothesis that old people still go to vote out of habit but their life experience tells them that nothing much is going to change if it did not happen by now and young people could be interested in politics as they are optimistic about the future and want their future to be better, so they would vote because they think they can change something. Also young people can be more left-wing than the old, they can be more attracted to political extremes which they think can do a change, rebel against the old system which is not according to their needs, they can also be more attracted to new parties and have a better response to events therefore can be more easily influenced by campaigns and other events like that. Although the two theories used so far as reference are relevant, they also have a gap which is further filled by the rational choice theory which unlike the first two, makes reference to the voters opinions not only to the influences of parents which can sometimes be short term ones until one finds its own identity and beliefs as a result of life experiences. This theory assumes that, as with consumers, it can be assumed that voters can and do weigh up the pros and cons of voting for a certain party in order to choose the one that brings them the greatest benefit(2007,Denver,D,pp23-24). This theory can also be an answer for the findings above. As a result of this report we can say that, even though class was a very important variable in the way the British electorate voted, after all the tested hypotheses we can clearly state that class still has some influence but it is not the most important factor in peoples choices of party at this time. Class has become one of the many factors that help the voter in his decision. The most probable explanation is that this happened due to divisions that have become less intense not just in Britain but all over the world shaped by the electors social identity in which class has lost its power since the Alignment Era of the 1950-1970s.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY o Denver, D. (2003) Elections and Voters in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave),ch.3,pp.4863,ch.2,pp.25-45,ch.4,pp.66-72 o Harrop, M. and W. L. Miller (1987): Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction (Basingstoke: Macmillan),pp.182-211,108-110

Petrescu Andreea Ioana