Defeat of the People's Army? The 2015 British general election and the UK Independence Party (UKIP)
The 2015 general election in Britain saw a major attempt by a relatively new party - the UK Independence Party (UKIP)- to secure elected representation. While UKIP received nearly four million votes, the party left the 2015 general election with just one Member of Parliament. Our evidence, drawn from analysis of British Election survey data and in-depth qualitative interviews with activists, suggests that UKIP's campaign was a major factor in its inability to translate widespread support into elected representation. While the party pursued a targeted campaign, this had only a modest impact on its own vote. UKIP's lack of resources, inexperience and inability to operationalize highly effective, targeted local campaigns severely hamstrung the party and prevented it from converting support into MPs at Westminster.
Mattes, Kyle, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2016. “Looking Good for Election Day: Does Attractiveness Predict Electoral Success in Britain?" British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18(1): 161-178.
What do British voters look for in their candidates? We know they favour candidates who have experience serving their constituents and those with local ties. As a result, parties often emphasise these characteristics in their campaign materials. However, these materials also provide voters with the candidates’ images. Using a survey where respondents are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we demonstrate that candidates who were deemed attractive enjoyed greater electoral success in the 2010 general election. Specifically, we find that candidates who are widely perceived to be more attractive had a higher vote share, even when we take into account the candidates’ age, party, incumbency and campaign spending.
Milazzo, Caitlin. 2015. "Getting it Right When it Counts: Constituency Marginality and Voters’ Perceptions of British Parties’ Policy Positions.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 25(2): 111-36.
The spatial model of electoral competition emphasizes the fit between citizens’ policy beliefs and party elites’ policy promises (and behaviour). Yet, many citizens lack the knowledge necessary to make a policy-based decision. This paper argues that despite the importance of national party politics in Britain, electoral marginality at the constituency-level improves citizens’ ability to select parties based on policy. Using data from the 2005 and 2010 British Election Studies, I find that citizens residing in marginal constituencies are more likely to perceive parties’ relative ideological positions correctly, and that electoral marginality promotes knowledge by increasing both the attention that parties pay to a constituency and citizens’ engagement in the election. Finally, preliminary findings suggest that citizens do not necessarily perceive differences in the tone of the campaign material.
Ryan, John B., and Caitlin Milazzo. 2015. “The South, the Suburbs, and the Vatican Too: Partisanship in Context.” Political Behavior 37(2): 441-63.
This paper explains changes in partisanship among Catholics in the last quarter of the 20th Century using a theory of partisan change centered on the contexts in which Catholics lived. Catholics were part of the post-New Deal Democratic coalition, but they have become a swing demographic group. We argue that these changes in partisanship are best explained by changes in elite messages that are filtered through an individual’s social network. Those Catholics who lived or moved into the increasingly Republican suburbs and South were the Catholics who were most likely to adopt a non-Democratic partisan identity. Changes in context better explain Catholic partisanship than party abortion policy post Roe v. Wade or ideological sorting. We demonstrate evidence in support of our argument using the ANES cumulative file from 1972 and 2000.
Karp, Jeffrey, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2015. “Democratic Scepticism and Political Participation in Europe.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 25(1): 97-110.
The former Communist countries of Eastern Europe have markedly lower levels of voter turnout than Western European countries, which could be a cause for concern if it represents a rejection of democratic values. In this article, we examine what people think about democracy and how these attitudes affect their likelihood of participating in the democratic process. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems drawn from national election surveys in 22 countries in Eastern and Western Europe, we find that citizens in Eastern Europe are more likely to express doubts about democracy and be dissatisfied with how it works in practice. More importantly, while we demonstrate that attitudes about democracy do affect political participation, they cannot fully account for the low levels of turnout observed in post-communist countries. This has implications for our interpretation of the significance of low turnout in national elections.
Mattes, Kyle, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2014. “Pretty Faces, Marginal Races: Predicting Election Outcomes using Trait Assessments of British Parliamentary Candidates.” Electoral Studies 34: 177-189.
The conventional wisdom on Western European politics leads us to believe that all the “action” lies with parties, because the unified parliamentary delegations in Western Europe draw voters’ attention to parties’ policies and images. Though British elections take place under a single member district plurality system, British parties, like their continental counterparts, are highly centralised and feature disciplined parliamentary delegations. Despite the strong ties between British candidates and their parties, we demonstrate that perceptions of candidates’ personal at-tributes can be used to predict general election outcomes. Using a computer-based survey where subjects are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we successfully predict outcomes from the 2010 general election. Moreover, we find that perceptions of candidates’ relative attractiveness are particularly useful for predicting outcomes in marginal constituencies.
Adams, James, Jane Green, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2012. "Who Moves? Elite Depolarization in Britain, 1987 – 2001." Electoral Studies 31(4): 653-655.
Over the past two decades the British Labour and Conservative parties have depolarized on economic and social welfare policy, at both the elite and mass levels. We ask the question: Does mass-level depolarization in Britain extend throughout the electorate, or is it confined primarily to the stratum of affluent, educated, and politically engaged citizens? We report longitudinal analyses of British Election Study respondents' policy beliefs and partisan loyalties over the period 1987–2001, and find that depolarization extends across all subgroups in the electorate, as do perceptions of elite depolarization. These effects are (moderately) more pronounced among the electoral subgroups of highly educated, affluent, and politically informed citizens. The findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences, and for differences in representation patterns between Britain and the United States. Replication Data
Adams, James, Jane Green, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2012. "Has the British Public Depolarized Along with Political Elites? An American Perspective on British Public Opinion." Comparative Political Studies 45(4): 507-530.
In contrast to the growing elite policy polarization in the United States, the British Labour and Conservative Parties have converged dramatically on economic and social welfare policy over the past two decades. The authors ask the following question: Has there been a parallel depolarization in the British mass public’s policy attitudes and partisan loyalties, pointing to a general mechanism that extends beyond the U.S. case? The authors report analyses of election survey data from 1987 to 2001 that document significant declines in the association between British citizens’ policy positions and their partisanship (partisan sorting). However, they find only modest changes in the dispersion of British respondents’ self-placements on the policy scales (policy extremity) and in mass attitude constraint, defined as the correlations between citizens’ positions across different policy issues. These trends in the British public’s policy preferences and partisan loyalties are mirror images of the trends in the American public’s policy preferences and mass partisanship.
Milazzo, Caitlin, James Adams, and Jane Green. 2012. "Are Voter Decision Rules Endogenous to Parties’ Policy Strategies? A Model with Applications to Elite Depolarization in Post-Thatcher Britain." Journal of Politics 74(1): 262-276.
While spatial modellers assume that citizens evaluate parties on the basis of their policy positions, empirical research on American politics suggests that citizens’ party attachments often drive their policy preferences, rather than vice versa. Building on previous findings that partisanship is less salient to British citizens than to Americans, we argue that British citizens predominantly update their partisanship to match their policy beliefs. We further argue that because policy salience declines when parties converge, citizens’ policy beliefs exert diminishing effects on their party evaluations as parties depolarize on a focal policy dimension—i.e., that voter decision rules are an endogenous function of parties’ policy strategies. We find support for these hypotheses via individual-level analyses of British election panel survey data between 1987 and 2001. We also find that the reciprocal policy-partisan effects we identify extend to different subconstituencies of British citizens including the more and less educated and politically engaged.
Supplementary Materials
Replication Materials
Buttice, Matthew K., and Caitlin Milazzo. 2011. "Candidate Positioning in Britain." Electoral Studies 30(4): 848-857.
Policy positioning has received a great deal of attention from scholars of British politics. While numerous studies emphasize the positions taken by the Labour and Conservative parties, and how the positions of these parties have shaped citizens’ electoral behavior, few studies explore policy positioning at the candidate-level. We conduct the first quantitative study that examines the relative policy positions of British candidates during a general election. Building on findings from the study of American elections, we argue that two factors explain variation in candidate positioning in Britain: constituency-level electoral competition and a disparity in candidate quality. Using data from the 2001 British Representation Study, we find evidence that both factors are associated with a decrease in the policy contrast between candidates. Our findings suggest that, despite the differences in party control, similar factors affect candidate positioning in both Great Britain and the United States.
Milazzo, Caitlin and Ethan Scheiner. 2011. "When Do You Follow the (National) Leader? Party Switching by Subnational Legislators in Japan." Electoral Studies 30(1): 148-61.
In 1993, after 38 years of single-party control, more than 20% of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) House of Representatives members left the party to form new alternatives and create an anti-LDP coalition government. However, despite substantial popular support, the new parties attracted few subnational politicians. The effect of this lack of subnational party switching was substantial since the relatively small pool of subnational defectors meant that the new parties had difficulty forming the strong subnational bases of support that would help them to compete with the LDP in the future. In this paper, we consider why so few subnational politicians were willing to switch to these new party alternatives. Using case studies and conditional logit analysis of party affiliation pattern among prefectural assembly members in Japan, we find that party switching was most common among subnational politicians who had powerful patrons who had also left the LDP and had maintained especially good access to central government largesse. We also find that subnational politicians from urban areas, which depend less upon central government pork, were considerably less likely to switch parties, than their rural counterparts.
The 2015 general election in Britain saw a major attempt by a relatively new party - the UK Independence Party (UKIP)- to secure elected representation. While UKIP received nearly four million votes, the party left the 2015 general election with just one Member of Parliament. Our evidence, drawn from analysis of British Election survey data and in-depth qualitative interviews with activists, suggests that UKIP's campaign was a major factor in its inability to translate widespread support into elected representation. While the party pursued a targeted campaign, this had only a modest impact on its own vote. UKIP's lack of resources, inexperience and inability to operationalize highly effective, targeted local campaigns severely hamstrung the party and prevented it from converting support into MPs at Westminster.
Mattes, Kyle, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2016. “Looking Good for Election Day: Does Attractiveness Predict Electoral Success in Britain?" British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18(1): 161-178.
What do British voters look for in their candidates? We know they favour candidates who have experience serving their constituents and those with local ties. As a result, parties often emphasise these characteristics in their campaign materials. However, these materials also provide voters with the candidates’ images. Using a survey where respondents are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we demonstrate that candidates who were deemed attractive enjoyed greater electoral success in the 2010 general election. Specifically, we find that candidates who are widely perceived to be more attractive had a higher vote share, even when we take into account the candidates’ age, party, incumbency and campaign spending.
Milazzo, Caitlin. 2015. "Getting it Right When it Counts: Constituency Marginality and Voters’ Perceptions of British Parties’ Policy Positions.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 25(2): 111-36.
The spatial model of electoral competition emphasizes the fit between citizens’ policy beliefs and party elites’ policy promises (and behaviour). Yet, many citizens lack the knowledge necessary to make a policy-based decision. This paper argues that despite the importance of national party politics in Britain, electoral marginality at the constituency-level improves citizens’ ability to select parties based on policy. Using data from the 2005 and 2010 British Election Studies, I find that citizens residing in marginal constituencies are more likely to perceive parties’ relative ideological positions correctly, and that electoral marginality promotes knowledge by increasing both the attention that parties pay to a constituency and citizens’ engagement in the election. Finally, preliminary findings suggest that citizens do not necessarily perceive differences in the tone of the campaign material.
Ryan, John B., and Caitlin Milazzo. 2015. “The South, the Suburbs, and the Vatican Too: Partisanship in Context.” Political Behavior 37(2): 441-63.
This paper explains changes in partisanship among Catholics in the last quarter of the 20th Century using a theory of partisan change centered on the contexts in which Catholics lived. Catholics were part of the post-New Deal Democratic coalition, but they have become a swing demographic group. We argue that these changes in partisanship are best explained by changes in elite messages that are filtered through an individual’s social network. Those Catholics who lived or moved into the increasingly Republican suburbs and South were the Catholics who were most likely to adopt a non-Democratic partisan identity. Changes in context better explain Catholic partisanship than party abortion policy post Roe v. Wade or ideological sorting. We demonstrate evidence in support of our argument using the ANES cumulative file from 1972 and 2000.
Karp, Jeffrey, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2015. “Democratic Scepticism and Political Participation in Europe.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 25(1): 97-110.
The former Communist countries of Eastern Europe have markedly lower levels of voter turnout than Western European countries, which could be a cause for concern if it represents a rejection of democratic values. In this article, we examine what people think about democracy and how these attitudes affect their likelihood of participating in the democratic process. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems drawn from national election surveys in 22 countries in Eastern and Western Europe, we find that citizens in Eastern Europe are more likely to express doubts about democracy and be dissatisfied with how it works in practice. More importantly, while we demonstrate that attitudes about democracy do affect political participation, they cannot fully account for the low levels of turnout observed in post-communist countries. This has implications for our interpretation of the significance of low turnout in national elections.
Mattes, Kyle, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2014. “Pretty Faces, Marginal Races: Predicting Election Outcomes using Trait Assessments of British Parliamentary Candidates.” Electoral Studies 34: 177-189.
The conventional wisdom on Western European politics leads us to believe that all the “action” lies with parties, because the unified parliamentary delegations in Western Europe draw voters’ attention to parties’ policies and images. Though British elections take place under a single member district plurality system, British parties, like their continental counterparts, are highly centralised and feature disciplined parliamentary delegations. Despite the strong ties between British candidates and their parties, we demonstrate that perceptions of candidates’ personal at-tributes can be used to predict general election outcomes. Using a computer-based survey where subjects are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we successfully predict outcomes from the 2010 general election. Moreover, we find that perceptions of candidates’ relative attractiveness are particularly useful for predicting outcomes in marginal constituencies.
Adams, James, Jane Green, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2012. "Who Moves? Elite Depolarization in Britain, 1987 – 2001." Electoral Studies 31(4): 653-655.
Over the past two decades the British Labour and Conservative parties have depolarized on economic and social welfare policy, at both the elite and mass levels. We ask the question: Does mass-level depolarization in Britain extend throughout the electorate, or is it confined primarily to the stratum of affluent, educated, and politically engaged citizens? We report longitudinal analyses of British Election Study respondents' policy beliefs and partisan loyalties over the period 1987–2001, and find that depolarization extends across all subgroups in the electorate, as do perceptions of elite depolarization. These effects are (moderately) more pronounced among the electoral subgroups of highly educated, affluent, and politically informed citizens. The findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences, and for differences in representation patterns between Britain and the United States. Replication Data
Adams, James, Jane Green, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2012. "Has the British Public Depolarized Along with Political Elites? An American Perspective on British Public Opinion." Comparative Political Studies 45(4): 507-530.
In contrast to the growing elite policy polarization in the United States, the British Labour and Conservative Parties have converged dramatically on economic and social welfare policy over the past two decades. The authors ask the following question: Has there been a parallel depolarization in the British mass public’s policy attitudes and partisan loyalties, pointing to a general mechanism that extends beyond the U.S. case? The authors report analyses of election survey data from 1987 to 2001 that document significant declines in the association between British citizens’ policy positions and their partisanship (partisan sorting). However, they find only modest changes in the dispersion of British respondents’ self-placements on the policy scales (policy extremity) and in mass attitude constraint, defined as the correlations between citizens’ positions across different policy issues. These trends in the British public’s policy preferences and partisan loyalties are mirror images of the trends in the American public’s policy preferences and mass partisanship.
Milazzo, Caitlin, James Adams, and Jane Green. 2012. "Are Voter Decision Rules Endogenous to Parties’ Policy Strategies? A Model with Applications to Elite Depolarization in Post-Thatcher Britain." Journal of Politics 74(1): 262-276.
While spatial modellers assume that citizens evaluate parties on the basis of their policy positions, empirical research on American politics suggests that citizens’ party attachments often drive their policy preferences, rather than vice versa. Building on previous findings that partisanship is less salient to British citizens than to Americans, we argue that British citizens predominantly update their partisanship to match their policy beliefs. We further argue that because policy salience declines when parties converge, citizens’ policy beliefs exert diminishing effects on their party evaluations as parties depolarize on a focal policy dimension—i.e., that voter decision rules are an endogenous function of parties’ policy strategies. We find support for these hypotheses via individual-level analyses of British election panel survey data between 1987 and 2001. We also find that the reciprocal policy-partisan effects we identify extend to different subconstituencies of British citizens including the more and less educated and politically engaged.
Supplementary Materials
Replication Materials
Buttice, Matthew K., and Caitlin Milazzo. 2011. "Candidate Positioning in Britain." Electoral Studies 30(4): 848-857.
Policy positioning has received a great deal of attention from scholars of British politics. While numerous studies emphasize the positions taken by the Labour and Conservative parties, and how the positions of these parties have shaped citizens’ electoral behavior, few studies explore policy positioning at the candidate-level. We conduct the first quantitative study that examines the relative policy positions of British candidates during a general election. Building on findings from the study of American elections, we argue that two factors explain variation in candidate positioning in Britain: constituency-level electoral competition and a disparity in candidate quality. Using data from the 2001 British Representation Study, we find evidence that both factors are associated with a decrease in the policy contrast between candidates. Our findings suggest that, despite the differences in party control, similar factors affect candidate positioning in both Great Britain and the United States.
Milazzo, Caitlin and Ethan Scheiner. 2011. "When Do You Follow the (National) Leader? Party Switching by Subnational Legislators in Japan." Electoral Studies 30(1): 148-61.
In 1993, after 38 years of single-party control, more than 20% of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) House of Representatives members left the party to form new alternatives and create an anti-LDP coalition government. However, despite substantial popular support, the new parties attracted few subnational politicians. The effect of this lack of subnational party switching was substantial since the relatively small pool of subnational defectors meant that the new parties had difficulty forming the strong subnational bases of support that would help them to compete with the LDP in the future. In this paper, we consider why so few subnational politicians were willing to switch to these new party alternatives. Using case studies and conditional logit analysis of party affiliation pattern among prefectural assembly members in Japan, we find that party switching was most common among subnational politicians who had powerful patrons who had also left the LDP and had maintained especially good access to central government largesse. We also find that subnational politicians from urban areas, which depend less upon central government pork, were considerably less likely to switch parties, than their rural counterparts.
