An Analysis of the Group Bases of British Politics: 1983–2019

Abstract

In this paper, we address two questions: (i) what were the group bases of the British electoral coalitions? And (ii) how have these group bases of support changed in the past decades? We determine which social group memberships significantly influence vote choice by using British Election Study data. We then incorporate demographic data to measure how many votes each social group contributed at each general election from 1983 to 2019. We find that the Labour Party has been obtaining fewer votes from union members and manual labourers, primarily due to shrinking group size and declining turnout. Yet, it is attracting more support from university graduates and ethnic minorities—groups growing in relative size. The Conservatives attract more votes from whites, homeowners and Anglicans. These groups are shrinking as a share of the population, but turn out at rates higher than the national average. Overall, our analysis reveals the changing cleavage structures in British politics.