Party Members in the United Kingdom

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Few, if any, fully-fledged democracies prosper without political parties. But parties are in trouble almost everywhere - both in terms of public perceptions, which are becoming more and more negative, and in terms of membership numbers, which (with the exception of some newer, more radical entrants into the market) have been dropping like a stone for some time. Unless we are willing to see parties become essentially elitist, hollowed-out institutions, this should give us cause for concern. In a healthy democracy, parties cannot simply be brands run by elites for their own and for our collective convenience. They need to be rooted in, rather than disconnected from, society. Their programmes need to reflect meaningful differences. Their leaders and their parliamentary candidates are best chosen by competitive election rather than appointment or inheritance. Party members can help ensure that all this occurs in practice as well as in theory. They can also, of course, make the difference between a party winning or losing an election since contests are decided not merely nationally, in the media, but locally, on the ground.In spite of this, we do not know as much as we might do about party members in the twenty-first century. The Conservatives have, it is true, been reasonably well served recently, not least by our own surveys carried out in 2009 and 2013. However, the last academic survey of Labour members was carried out back in 1997 and the last survey of Liberal Democrat members was completed in 1999. UKIP members have never been surveyed. Just as importantly, there has never been a study of the members of several parties carried out concurrently, thereby enabling researchers to ask them exactly the same questions at exactly the same time. Nor has there been any systematic study of people who leave political parties after joining them. We will change all this. Using samples gleaned from the massive panels collected by internet pollsters, and therefore minimising the logistical and other problems posed by enlisting the parties themselves, we will, in mid-May 2015, carry out simultaneous surveys of the members of the UK's four biggest parties, along with Labour's potential trade union affiliated members and those citizens who feel strongly attached to one party or another yet do not choose to join them. Then, a year later, we will survey those who have left their parties. In order to study the dynamics as well as the demographics of party membership, we will include some of the same questions asked in the pioneering surveys conducted in the 1990s. By fielding the surveys just after the general election and the formation of a new government, we will also contribute to the study of the so-called ground war between the parties and the attitude of their members to different governing options. We will talk, too, to the parties to compare their perspectives.Our project will benefit academic and non-academic audiences. Politicians and journalists will henceforth know about party members rather than have to make assumptions or educated guesses. Parties can use that knowledge to boost recruitment and retention of traditional and less conventional members. Political scientists interested in parties will not only be able to judge the effectiveness of internet polling as a research tool but also have a number of questions answered about members' social characteristics, attitudes, activities, campaigning and their reasons for joining or leaving - as will those interested in trade unionists' involvement in politics and those interested in comparing voter preferences for different types of candidates to those expressed by the party members who select them. Finally, our research will inform and equip the members themselves. They of course know what they think and what they do as individuals, and in their local parties, but they do not always know how they compare to members in other places and in other parties. Knowledge is power.