Survey research and explaining electoral change in Britain

Abstract

This paper summarises and evaluates the contribution that the survey based study of electoral behaviour has made to the study of electoral behaviour in Britain from its inception in the 1950s up to and including the 1997 general election. Three predominant themes are identified - the impact of social structure on voting behaviour, the role of elections in a liberal democracy, and the impact of institutions such as the media and political parties. Although a predominant intellectual paradigm has existed at particular points in time, over the period as a whole each of these themes has generated lively and vigorous debate. However, it is not clear that a purely Michigan style survey approach of the kind that has been institutionalised by the British Election Study since the 1960s can adequately answer the questions those debates have raised.