Positional Issues, Valence Issues and the Economic Geography of Voting in British Elections
Posted: 7 Jul 2008
Date Written: January 2008
Abstract
A body of research has built up in recent years linking the changing geography of party support in British elections to variations in the country's economic geography. Consistent with the economic vote model, government support has been shown to be higher than average in affluent areas and lower than average in poorer areas. However, the great majority of such studies have concentrated on elections between 1979 and 1997, a prolonged period of one-party rule. This article argues that this means existing research cannot differentiate between the very different predictions of positional and valence approaches to economic voting since both suggest identical outcomes during Conservative administrations. By contrasting a period of Conservative rule with a period of Labour rule, however, the article provides a test of the competing claims of the positional and valence arguments for an understanding of Britain's electoral geography.
Keywords: economic voting, valence politics, electoral geography
JEL Classification: D72
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation