The personal vote, electoral experience, and local connections: Explaining retirement underperformance at UK elections 1987–2010
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Author | Alia Middleton |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395718754717 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718754717
Politics
2019, Vol. 39(2) 137 –153
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395718754717
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The personal vote,
electoral experience,
and local connections:
Explaining retirement
underperformance at UK
elections 1987–2010
Alia Middleton
University of Surrey, UK
Abstract
At each election, some Members of Parliament (MPs) decide to step down. Irrespective of their
motivation, retirement has an electoral impact; their party’s constituency vote share experiences
a ‘slump’. Conventional wisdom attributes this underperformance to the loss of the retiring
MP’s personal vote. This article uses aggregate-level data covering UK general elections between
1987 and 2010 to demonstrate whether this explanation is supported. It also examines whether
political parties can mediate such underperformances by considering the electoral experience and
local connections of candidates contesting the post-retirement election. The article finds mixed
evidence for the link between personal votes and underperformance. However, parties should
pay close attention to the candidates selected to fight the post-retirement election. If an inheritor
wants to win a national government or opposition seat, experience and local ties can be harmful.
Also, schooling and other local ties enable candidates to mount effective challenges to government
and opposition inheritors.
Keywords
British politics, candidates, elections, Hansard, personal vote
Received: 17th April 2017; Revised version received: 24th November 2017; Accepted: 29th November 2017
As elections approach, some incumbents will not recontest their seats. In the United
Kingdom, the numbers of Member of Parliament (MP) retiring varies, ranging from 79 in
2001 to 149 in 2010 in the period covered by this article. However, the retiring incumbent
leaves behind an uncomfortable electoral legacy: the retirement slump; more accurately,
an underperformance in vote share at the subsequent election. Existing research (see
Curtice et al., 2010) has shown that in seats where the sitting MP retires, their party’s vote
Corresponding author:
Alia Middleton, Department of Politics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, Surrey, UK.
Email: a.middleton@surrey.ac.uk
754717POL0010.1177/0263395718754717PoliticsMiddleton
research-article2018
Article
138 Politics 39(2)
share performs worse than in other constituencies where they are the incumbent or chal-
lenger. In 2015, for example, Conservative vote share in seats where an MP retired (albeit
after their first term) rose 1 percentage point, yet in seats where a Conservative first-term
incumbent stood again, the party’s vote share rose by 4.5 percentage points on average
(Curtice et al., 2015: 398). Such underperformances have been attributed (Norris et al.,
1992) to the loss of the retiring MP’s personal vote, and that part of the constituency vote
tied to their own particular personality traits, reputation, and career. When the MP steps
down, this individual source of support is absent and the party vote will fall. However,
this assumption has not been tested in depth, and there has been no investigation of alter-
nate explanations.
This article addresses this gap by considering whether the loss of the personal vote lies
behind retirement underperformances and whether careful candidate selection post-retire-
ment can affect the fall in the party vote. It begins by considering the evidence for retire-
ment underperformance in the context of the wider personal vote literature, examining
whether the size of the underperformance depends upon the retiring MP’s career, specifi-
cally their national prominence, tenure, and constituency service. This article also consid-
ers the role that candidates standing in the post-retirement election play in mediating such
underperformances, focusing on their previous electoral experience and their local con-
nections. Using data from an aggregate constituency dataset combined with biographical
information and Hansard records, the article takes an innovative approach to explaining
retirement underperformances at UK general elections from 1987 to 2010. It examines
three hypotheses considering the impact of the loss of a retiring MP’s personal vote and
whether parties should select experienced or local candidates to fight in post-retirement
contests.
Identifying retirement underperformances
The retirement of MPs is not an occasional occurrence; it is a constant feature of UK
general elections that merits attention. So why do MPs retire? First, fewer are entering
politics after long careers elsewhere (King, 1981). Instead of being ‘carried out in pine
boxes’ (Frantzich, 1978), an increasing number of MPs opt for ‘voluntary retirement’
(Norris et al., 1992). Second, by-elections rarely favour the governing party (Labour lost
an average of 11.1 percentage points at by-elections fought between 1997 and 2001). The
single largest cause of by-elections is the death of the sitting MP, so many are encouraged
to retire rather than run the risk (Norris, 1990). Third, strategic retirement appears to be
on the rise. Rather than be defeated in constituencies where the outcome is uncertain,
their behaviour has caused scandal (the 2009 expenses scandal being a case in point; see
Pattie and Johnston, 2012), or constituency boundaries have been redrawn, many MPs
choose to quit (Groseclose and Krehbiel, 1994: 74).
Table 1 details the number of MPs who have retired and have identifiable inheritors
(which is not always the case when extensive boundary reviews occur1) between 1987
and 2010. At each election, over 10% of the MPs in the House of Commons has retired.
However, in 2010, with electoral defeat looking likely for Labour and many MPs
tainted by the 2009 expenses scandal, more than 20% of the MPs in the House retired.
That the Conservatives comprised the largest number of retirees (53) in 1997, and
more than twice as many Labour MPs (89) than Conservative MPs (41) stood down in
2010 offers broad support for strategic retirement – where an MP retires to avoid elec-
toral defeat.2
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