The Importance of Place

Political Studies, 1988

The extent to which levels and trends in local unemployment and income influenced the Conservative vote in 633 separate British constituency elections in 1983 is estimated in several regression models. Long-term influences on voting are controlled by the endogenous variables of social class and territoriality. It is argued that this research design is superior to previous ones that have treated general elections as national elections in exploring the economic theory of voting. Sensitivity analysis (the use of several models to illuminate the research problem posed) suggests that, unlike America congressional elections, current rates and trends in local unemployment and income exerted a substantial and systematic influence on constituency voting.

Electoral Studies, 1993

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sheffield, 1995.

2000

Local context is widely believed to influence voting behavior with, for example, the voters' evaluation of the state of their local economy affecting whether they choose to reward or punish the incumbent government. Such reward-punish models apply in the United Kingdom at the national ...

The Manchester School, 2014

This paper examines the impact of the UK Public Sector Pay Review Bodies (PRBs) on the pay of their remit groups comparing the real weekly earnings of workers using ASHE and LFS data from 1993 to 2007 for 10 occupational subgroups. Using consecutive difference-indifferences we can identify whether the PRBs have had an impact by comparing the differences in pay for different occupations in successive time periods. Our examination of the annual changes in differentials suggest that the PRBs may have had relatively little systematic impact on earnings over and above that observed for comparable individuals working elsewhere in the public sector. * Manuscript received 31.12.12; final version received 9.6.14. † We are grateful to Steve Palmer for his support, to the Office for National Statistics for giving us access to ASHE, and to the Data Archive at Essex for providing the LFS data and for additional help. Gerry Makepeace's research was partly funded by the ESRC (grant ES/K003283/1).

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2000

Many analysts associate voting patterns in Great Britain with electors' evaluations of the state of the economy, whereby those who think it has improved recently are likely to vote for the government's return to power, whereas those who think it has worsened are more likely to vote for an opposition party. Most of these studies consider the national economy only, but data derived from the 1997 British Election Study cross-sectional survey show strong relationships between votes and evaluations of recent changes in the electors' (self-defined) home areas. This paper relates those evaluations, and the resultant voting patterns, to the 'objective circumstances' in the respondents' home areas, using unemployment rates as an indicator of local economic well-being. Using specially devised data for 'bespoke neighbourhoods' around each respondent's home, we show that the probability of a vote against the government was a function of both 'objective conditions' and 'subjective evaluations', and that there were significant scale effects in this: people apparently reacted to very local variations when making their voting decisions. key words economic voting scale neighbourhood effect England and Wales

2020

There were large regional differentials in the Brexit vote. Most notably, the percentage voting to leave the EU ranged from 38% in Scotland and 40% in London to 59% in the East and West Midlands. Turnout also varied across Britain, from a low of 67% in Scotland to 77% in the South East and South West. Existing empirical studies have tended to focus on the demographic composition of geographical areas to identify the key socio-economic characteristics in explaining spatial and other variations in the leave vote - with age and education found to be important drivers. We use the British Social Attitudes Survey to provide a more nuanced picture of regional differences in the Brexit vote by examining in particular the role that national identity and attitudes towards immigration played. In addition to education, we find that national identity exerted a strong influence on the probability voting leave in several English regions, including the East, North East, London and South East. Where...

Environment and Planning A, 2006

In this paper we compare periods of low pay employment between urban and rural areas in the UK. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we estimate the probability that a period of low pay employment will end allowing for a number of possible outcomes, namely to a 'high pay' job, self-employment, unemployment and out of the labour force. The results

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011

The Compleat Economic Voter: New Evidence from the UK While economic voting has been much studied, almost all the work has been based on the classic reward-punishment model, which treats the economy as a valence issue. The economic is, indeed, a valence issue, but it is much more than that. In the work at hand, we explore two other dimensions of economic votingposition and patrimony. Through investigation of a 2010 UK election survey containing relevant measures on these three dimensions, we estimate their impact on vote intention, in the context of a carefully specified system of equations. According to the evidence reported, each dimension of economic voting has its own independent effect. Moreover, together, they reveal a "compleat" economic voter, who wields considerable power over electoral choice in Britain. This result, while new, confirms and extends recent work on US and French elections.

Why could political incentives be different during election times? This article provides answers to this question using a career-concern model of political cycles. The analysis in the article is also relevant to understanding other agency relationships in which an important part of compensation is decided on infrequently.