How Do Economic Crises Affect Electoral Choices? Analysing Voting Behavior in the British General Elections of 2010
Yuki Yanai
Magara, Hideko (ed) 2014.
Economic Crises and Policy Regimes: The Dynamics of Policy
Innovation and Paradigmatic Change: Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp.263-279.
Abstract
Since the current financial crisis began in 2008, we have observed
many historic government turnovers (e.g., US, Japan, and Italy). In
the UK, the Labour Party lost the leading position in the Parliament
to the Conservative Party and the government to the coalition of the
Conservative Party and the Liberal Democratic Party in May 2010. Why
did the British voters choose to kick the incumbent out of the
government? Why did they not give the majority of parliamentary seats
to the Conservative Party? Employing the economic voting theory, this
article tries to explain the individual citizens' vote choices in the
2010 election. Economic voting theory usually focuses on the valence
issue, but we explore other dimensions of economic vote as well. Above
all, perceptions of the financial crisis is considered as another
dimension of economic vote. By analyzing the survey data of the 2010
UK general election, it is demonstrated that four aspects of economy
were important for British voters: valence, position, patrimony, and
crisis. These four factors do not always have the impact on vote
choices: different factors matter for different sets of alternatives.
The result suggests the nancial crisis was a cause of Labour's loss of
the government office.
ISBN: 978-1-782-54991-8
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