The Interaction Between Electoral Preferences and Party Leaders in Britain

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Theoretical spatial voting models typically assume that parties are unitary actors and adopt pre-election policy positions so as to maximize electoral vote (or seat strengths). Recent work by the principal investigator and his colleagues has constructed multi-nomial probit (MNP) models of electoral response in a number of European countries, and Israel. While the models accurately capture electoral behavior, it is also quite obvious that parties are generally not vote maximizers. Formal analysis has proposed that parties in polities based on proportional representation (PR) adopt pre-election policies with a view to pros-election coalition bargaining. However, such models do not explain pre-election party choices in Britain, where explicit government coalitions are rare.This research builds an integrated model of electoral and party behavior in the "majoritarian" British polity, focussing on the 1992 and 1997 elections. To construct the MNP model of British elections, data on both voter preferred positions and party declarations are required. Survey data, available from the Essex Archive are used to generate sample distributions of voter preferences. Computer coding of party manifestos are used to estimate party positions. Voter intentions are used to estimate the MNP model. Additional monthly Gallup "popularity" data, together with economic variables and retrospective/prospective aggregate data are used to refine the MNP model of electoral vote. The electoral model so constructed will provide insight into the degree of "strategic" electoral behavior.Simulation of the operation of the pattern of districting (into constituencies) permits an estimation of the operator relating party positions to seat strengths. The policy preferences of British Legislators are obtained through questionnaires. These, together with survey data on attitudes of party activists, are used to analyze the internal decision problem within each party over the choice of party leader and construction of election manifestos.Related theoretical work focuses on the nature of strategic maneuvering by the three major parties prior to elections.The integration of the theoretical and empirical models on Britain, together with parallel work on European "multiparty" policies improves understand of the nature of the "structural" differences between majoritarian and proportional electoral systems. The combination of macro-political models and micro-electoral analysis has the potential to contribute substantially to the understanding of democratic decision-making under different institutional arrangements.