Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Class voting refers to the tendency for citizens in a particular social class to vote for a given political party or candidate rather than an alternative option when compared with voters in other classes. Though apparently simple, this notion has generated considerable intricacy and ambiguity. The definition of social class has been much debated, as have measures of class position and attempts to summarize statistically the class–vote association. Explanations of patterns of class voting are little in evidence and of uncertain generality. Nevertheless, despite these unresolved disputes concerning measurement and theory, there has at least been a substantial body of research into whether or not levels of class voting have weakened as western democracies have moved from being industrial to post-industrial societies. Interest in class voting emerged in response in part to the failed agenda of Marxism, for whom electoral politics was an expression of the democratic class struggle that supposedly preceded the expected class-based revolution. This tended to result in a focus on class voting as a dispute between just two classes, the working class and the middle class, and their political representatives, parties of the left and right. Early research also relied on data obtained at the level of electoral constituencies, with the consequent need to make strong assumptions about how voters ... log in or subscribe to read full text