Factors affecting voting behaviour
Assessment on factors affecting voting behaviour being more important than others in the UK.
By
Maryam Ishaq
The UK is a largely populated place with many people who are opinionated in politics, so, voting is important to many people as they get their say in who should run the country, however, many factors influence and affect the voting behaviour of the UK voting participates. The following essay intends to discuss what factors, affecting voting behaviour, is more important that the others.
It is often said that social class is the key determinant in voting behaviour. Traditionally, social class has been seen to be the most important factor to be associated with voting behaviour. The social class based system has influence many people’s actions and attitude towards voting as the higher social classes (AB and C1) are more influenced in voting for the Conservative party, whereas, the lower social classes ( C2 and DE) are more influenced in voting for the Labour party. The positive affect that social class has on voting behaviour is that it is somewhat predictable as the social class voting pattern is seen to be constant, however, the negative aspect of social class affecting voting behaviour is that it produces class dealignment which is when there is a decline in the number of people voting according to their natural class. For example, in the 2010 general elections, the lowest social class (DE) had voted 40% for the Labour party, which was an 8% decrease for the 2005 elections. This means that social class did affect the voting behaviour but in a negative way as the lowest social class was affected by class dealignment, since 8% of voters didn’t vote for the party they were socially meant to, however, this is to an extent as Labour won the highest percentage of votes in the DE class. Therefore, it can be said that social class does have a positive and negative affect on voting behaviour, to an extent as other factors do also have an influence on voting
By
Maryam Ishaq
The UK is a largely populated place with many people who are opinionated in politics, so, voting is important to many people as they get their say in who should run the country, however, many factors influence and affect the voting behaviour of the UK voting participates. The following essay intends to discuss what factors, affecting voting behaviour, is more important that the others.
It is often said that social class is the key determinant in voting behaviour. Traditionally, social class has been seen to be the most important factor to be associated with voting behaviour. The social class based system has influence many people’s actions and attitude towards voting as the higher social classes (AB and C1) are more influenced in voting for the Conservative party, whereas, the lower social classes ( C2 and DE) are more influenced in voting for the Labour party. The positive affect that social class has on voting behaviour is that it is somewhat predictable as the social class voting pattern is seen to be constant, however, the negative aspect of social class affecting voting behaviour is that it produces class dealignment which is when there is a decline in the number of people voting according to their natural class. For example, in the 2010 general elections, the lowest social class (DE) had voted 40% for the Labour party, which was an 8% decrease for the 2005 elections. This means that social class did affect the voting behaviour but in a negative way as the lowest social class was affected by class dealignment, since 8% of voters didn’t vote for the party they were socially meant to, however, this is to an extent as Labour won the highest percentage of votes in the DE class. Therefore, it can be said that social class does have a positive and negative affect on voting behaviour, to an extent as other factors do also have an influence on voting