The Dynamics of Party Preference Change in Britain, 1991–1996
| Author | David Sanders,Malcolm Brynin |
| Date | 01 June 1999 |
| Published date | 01 June 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00197 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Dynamics of Party Preference Change
in Britain, 1991±1996
DAVID SANDERS AND MALCOLM BRYNIN*
University of Essex
The paper examines individual-level data from the ®rst six waves of the British
Household Panel Survey, 1991±96. The analysis shows that changes in party support
in this period were signi®cantly aected by two sets of factors that have traditionally
been regarded as important sources of changes in voters' political preferences:
ideology and personal economic experiences. Ideological change is demonstrated to
have much stronger direct eects on party preference than economic factors.
However, both objective economic conditions and subjective economic perceptions
are shown to have signi®cant eects on ideological change itself, implying that
economic factors also exert important indirect eects on voters' partisan preferences.
These individual-level ®ndings provide important corroboration for the results of
aggregate-level studies, which have consistently found that economic factors ± and in
particular economic perceptions ± play a major role in determining patterns of
partisan support.
One of the most interesting features of the British political scene in the 1990s
was the dramatic loss of support experienced by the Conservatives in the 1997
General Election ± and the attendant recovery of Labour. There has already
been a considerable amount of research conducted into the causes of the
changing popularity of the two major parties during the 1992±97 period.1 From
the aggregate opinion poll data, it is clear that the Conservatives incurred a
signi®cant loss of support in the autumn of 1992, at the time that Britain was
forcibly ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.2 Indeed, the
Conservative Party's reputation for competent economic management ± a
reputation which had almost certainly underpinned its electoral success during
the 1980s ± was seriously damaged in the wake of the ERM crisis. The party's
subsequent disunity over the European issue, combined with accusations of
* The authors are indebted to three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this paper.
1 See Anthony King et al., New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls (Chatham NJ, Chatham
House, 1997); David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997 (Basing-
stoke, Macmillan, 1997); Special Issue of Parliamentary Aairs: Britain Votes, 1997, 50 (October
1997), 509±758; David Sanders, `Conservative Incompetence, Labour Responsibility and the
Feelgood Factor: Why the Economy Failed to Save the Conservatives in 1997'. Paper prepared for
the Political Studies Association Specialist Conference on Elections, Public Opinion and Parties,
University of Essex, 26±28 September 1997.
2 See, for example, the data reported in David Sanders, `Economic performance, management
competence and the outcome of the next general election', Political Studies, 44 (1996), 201±31.
# Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
220
Party Preference Change in Britain
sleaze that were never successfully answered, further weakened the govern-
ment's position. To make matters worse for the Conservatives, Tony Blair's
modernization of New Labour rendered the Labour Party newly `electable' in
the eyes of many voters. By ceasing to be socialist, and by moving into the centre
ground of party politics, the Labour Party successfully made an appeal to
sections of the British electorate that for 18 years it had been unable to reach.
This paper seeks to go beyond an analysis of these relatively immediate causes
of the Conservatives' collapse and Labour's triumph. It considers the short-
term dynamic eects of two sets of factors that have traditionally been regarded
as important sources of changes in voters' political preferences: ideology and
voters' economic experiences.3 As far as ideology is concerned, the theoretical
principles involved are relatively straightforward.4 Voters and parties are
located at varying points along the left/right ideology continuum. Other things
being equal, voters will tend to support the party they perceive to be closest to
their own position on the ideological spectrum. If an individual voter, for
whatever reason, shifts her/his position towards the left (right) then s/he is more
likely to vote for a left (right) wing party. Equally, if a party moves leftward or
rightward along the ideological spectrum, then it is more likely, other things
being equal, to win the support of voters who are already located in that part of
the political spectrum.
With regard to economic experiences, conventional wisdom holds that
governments that deliver economic prosperity tend to secure re-election,
whereas those associated with economic failure tend to lose oce.5 There are,
of course, many important nuances associated with economic theories of
voting, involving debates as to whether economic motives are primarily retro-
spective or prospective, and whether they are egocentric (personal) or socio-
tropic (national).6 Regardless of these complexities, however, most proponents
of `economic voting' generally acknowledge that there are two main sorts of
eect involved: those relating to voters' economic perceptions and those relating
to their objective ®nancial circumstances. Put simply, voters who are better o ±
or who believe that they are likely to become better o ± will be more likely to
support the incumbent party. Those whose economic position has deterio-
rated ± or who perceive that it has deteriorated ± will be more inclined to
support the opposition.
The data that we employ in this study are drawn from the ®rst six waves
(1991±96) of the British Household Panel Survey. Given that over 6000
respondents have been interviewed across all six panel waves, the data constitute
an invaluable resource for examining the eects of British voters' changing
3 See David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain (London, Macmillan, 1969);
Bo Sarlvik and Ivor Crewe, Decade of Dealignment: the Conservative Victory of 1979 and Electoral
Trends in the 1970s (London, Cambridge University Press, 1983); Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell
and John Curtice, Understanding Political Change (London, Pergamon, 1991); Anthony Heath,
Roger Jowell and John Curtice (eds), Labour's Last Chance? The 1992 Election and Beyond
(Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1994).
4 Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, Harper Row, 1957).
5 Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Economic and Elections: the Major Western Democracies (Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan Press, 1981).
6 For the seminal discussion of these issues see Morris Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American
National Elections (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1981). See also D. Kinder and D. R.
Kiewiet, `Sociotropic politics: the American case', British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995),
145±70.
# Political Studies Association, 1999
DAVID SANDERS AND MALCOLM BRYNIN
221
economic perceptions and ®nancial circumstances on their political opinions.
The data also allow for the analysis of voters' changing ideological positions.
The next section of the paper describes the aggregate-level changes in party
support, in ideology, and in personal economic conditions and perceptions that
occurred among the British electorate between 1991 and 1996. We then develop
the speci®c hypotheses concerning the impact of ideological and economic
factors that we seek to test and outline the model speci®cation we employ. Next,
we present our empirical ®ndings. These show that at the individual level
ideological factors ± and in particular ideological changes ± were more impor-
tant as sources of changes in party preferences than were economic calculations.
However, we also show ± crucially ± that individual changes in ideological
position were themselves in part the result of changes in economic perceptions
and conditions. Our results indicate, in short, that economics played a
signi®cant role in the changing pattern of UK party support that occurred
between 1991 and 1996. Although the direct eects of economic factors on party
preference are relatively limited, the indirect eects ± through ideology ± are
considerable. This ®nding provides important corroboration for the results of
aggregate-level studies, which have consistently found that economic factors
(and, in particular, economic perceptions) play a major role in determining
patterns of partisan support.7
Preference Change, Ideological Change and Economic Change, 1991±96:
the Aggregate Picture
Table 1 describes the changing levels of support for the three major UK parties
over the period 1991±96. For the sake of brevity, our discussion here focuses
only on the Conservative and Labour parties. This is not to suggest that the
Liberal Democrats are electorally unimportant, merely that the analysis would
become overburdened with detail if we were to include an investigation of the
changing pattern of Liberal Democrat fortunes. As far as Table 1 is concerned,
it is important to note that the BHPS data are collected each autumn. The party
support ®gures for 1992 are accordingly based on respondents' recall of their
vote in April 1992. The ®gures for 1991 and for 1993±96 are a `composite'
derived from a sequence of three questions that are asked by the BHPS in non-
election years. These are:
(1) Generally...
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