Intersectionality and English Voting Behaviour: And Was There a 2017 Youthquake
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Author | Kelvyn Jones,Charles Pattie,Ron Johnston,David Manley |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929919875055 |
| Subject Matter | Early Results |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919875055
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(2) 294 –303
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929919875055
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Intersectionality and English
Voting Behaviour: And Was
There a 2017 Youthquake
Ron Johnston1, Charles Pattie2,
Kelvyn Jones1 and David Manley1
Abstract
Intersectionality is an increasingly popular concept across several social sciences but has received
little explicit attention within British political science. This note introduces the concept, identifies
some problems in its application to the study of voting behaviour and illustrates its use by
addressing the extent to which there was a ‘youthquake’ at the 2017 UK general election.
Keywords
intersectionality, voting, general election, England 2017
Accepted: 24 July 2019
Intersectionality is an increasingly important concept across several social sciences, covering
both quantitative and qualitative studies. Although the concept per se is relatively new, and
only recently gaining traction in the quantitative literature, the arguments behind it are not;
they have not been fully developed in some areas, however, such as quantitative political
science in the United Kingdom. This note introduces the concept, identifies some problems
in its application to the study of voting behaviour and illustrates its use by addressing a recent
issue – the extent to which there was a ‘youthquake’ at the 2017 UK general election.
Intersectionality
The core argument underpinning the concept of intersectionality originated within femi-
nist scholarship:1 individuals have multiple, overlapping, sometimes intersecting and
complex identities – one of which is gender – and appreciation of their behaviour requires
analyses that incorporate those intersections. Analyses should not be simply additive but
should identify non-additive relationships. Bauer (2014: 11, following Hancock, 2007),
for example, categorised research strategies into the following:
1School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
2Department of Politics, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
Ron Johnston, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK.
Email: r.johnston@bristol.ac.uk
875055PSW0010.1177/1478929919875055Political Studies ReviewJohnston et al.
research-article2019
Early Results
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