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This work offers a novel perspective on British elections, focusing on the role of electoral shocks in the context of increasing electoral volatility.

Taking evidence from the 1997 British General Election Study, we investigate the popularity of Liberal Democrat policies - how successful the party was in converting sympathy into votes - and examine reasons behind the failure to build on its popularity. The Liberal Democrats are shown to have had popular policies and popular leadership in the 1997 election but this failed to translate into votes. A model of Liberal Democrat voting shows that established predictors of voting behaviour such as social class and age have little influence. Attitudinally, voters who hold the party leadership in high regard and who are in agreement with Liberal Democrat policies are much more likely to vote for the party. The model also shows that the Liberal Democrats performed best where they were best placed to defeat a Conservative candidate. It is argued that natural `liberals' make up only a minority of voters and only a small proportion of these actually vote for the party. Only in areas where they have a clear chance of success are they able to mobilize their latent support.

Investigates why LD leader Paddy Ashdown's popularity and voter approval of party positions did not translate into significant gains, party identification, LD voters' characteristics, the lack of a clear base of support, and LD candidates' performance against Labour and Conservative opponents; based on 1997 General Election Study data.

The parliamentary party of the Liberal Democrats is a symbol of the third party's growth in recent years. As a result of successful election targeting and an improvement in electoral reach, the party has seen its number of MPs at Westminster more than triple since 1992. It has been claimed that the increase in size of the parliamentary party has been accompanied by an increase in its power, so that the parliamentarians now have a de facto power of veto over policy despite the official policy‐making structures as laid out in the Liberal Democrat constitution. This article investigates the make‐up of the parliamentary Liberal Democrats and their contemporary influence over policy formation, and the parliamentary party's relationship with the conference and the party leader—and especially the events leading to the change of Liberal Democrat leader in 2006—to establish the veracity of this claim.

This article uses data from the British Election Study series since 1974 and qualitative data from interviews with key party personnel to investigate the social and political basis of Liberal support in Britain. There are three main sections to the article: the first deals with the social and demographic profile of the Liberal vote, while the second examines the political characteristics of its supporters. In the final section these findings are used to assess the Liberal Democrats' electoral strategy at the 2001 General Election and beyond. We find that Liberals tend to be drawn from a similar social background to Conservative supporters (particularly in term of class), but politically there has been an increasingly close relationship between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party.

This article uses data from the British Election Study series since 1974 & qualitative data from interviews with key party personnel to investigate the social & political basis of Liberal support in GB. There are three main sections to the article: the first deals with the social & demographic profile of the Liberal vote, while the second examines the political characteristics of its supporters. In the final section, these findings are used to assess the Liberal Democrats' electoral strategy at the 2001 General Election & beyond. We find that Liberals tend to be drawn from a similar social background to Conservative supporters (particularly in term of class), but politically there has been an increasingly close relationship between the Liberal Democrats & the Labour Party. 11 Tables, 5 Figures, 34 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article investigates the make-up of the parliamentary Liberal Democrats and their contemporary influence over policy formation, and the parliamentary party's relationship with the conference and the party leader. It has been claimed that the increase in size of the parliamentary party has been accompanied by an increase in its power, so that the parliamentarians now have a de facto power of veto over policy despite the official policy-making structures as laid out in the Liberal Democrat constitution. References. Adapted from the source document.

Drawing on callaborative research from a team at Harvard and Manchester universities, this book asks how two very different societies are responding to the tide of diversity that is being felt around the rich world. 'The Age of Obama' mixes social scientific rigour with accessible charts and lively arguments

Using an agent-based simulation of electoral participation, this paper examines the second order or cascade effects of an exogenous increase in turnout. Unlike most previous applications of agent-based modelling in political science, we adopt a descriptively complex rather than a simple model of behaviour. Experimenting with different levels of mobilisation allows estimation of the extent to which mobilisation spreads beyond the primary mobilisation target across the population as well as whether or not it survives over time. We argue that in a complex world cascade effects are smaller than previously thought. However, mobilisation effects can create secondary effects through habitual voting and increases in political interest and party affiliation, which reverberate over time, creating long-term spillover effects.

Democratic theory and electoral behavior / Ian McAllister -- The sociological and social-psychological approaches / Vincent Hutchings and Hakeem Jefferson -- Rational choice theory and voting / Keith Dowding -- Institutions and voting behavior / B. Guy Peters -- The big picture : turnout at the macro level / Jack Vowles -- Demographic and the social bases of voter turnout / Eric Plutzer -- Turnout and the calculus of voting : recent advances and prospects for integration with theories of campaigns and elections / John Aldrich and Libby M. Jenke -- Voting and the expanding repertoire of participation / Jan van Deth -- The acquisition of voting habits / Elias Dinas -- Long-term factors : class and religious cleavages / Geoff Evans and Ksenia Northmore-Ball -- Ideology and electoral choice / Martin Elff -- Party identification / Shaun Bowler -- Trends in partisanship / Oliver Heath -- Politics, media and the electoral role of party leaders / Anthony Mughan and Loes Aaldering -- Preferences, constraints, and choices : tactical voting in mass elections / R. Michael Alvarez, D. Roderick Kiewiet and Lucas Núñez -- Economic voting / Marianne Stewart and Harold Clarke -- Electoral systems / Iain McLean -- Electoral integrity / Pippa Norris -- Voting behavior in multi-level electoral systems / Hermann Schmitt and Eftichia Teperoglou -- Local context, social networks and neighbourhood effects on voter choice / Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie -- Voting behavior in referendums / Michael Marsh -- Networks, contexts, and the process of political influence / Robert Huckfeldt, Matthew T. Pietryka and John B. Ryan -- Persuasion and mobilization effects by parties and candidates / Justin Fisher -- Campaign strategies, media and voters : the fourth era of political communication / Holli Semetko and Hubert Tworzecki -- The role of mass media in shaping public opinion and voter behaviour / Susan Banducci -- Digital campaigning / Stephen Ward, Rachel Gibson and Marta Cantijoch -- Attitudes, values and belief systems / Oddbjørn Knutsen -- The stability of political attitudes / Robert Erikson -- Political knowledge: measurement, misinformation and turnout / Jennifer Hudson -- Is there a rational public? / Jørgen Bølstad -- The geometry of party competition. parties and voters in the issue space / Lorenzo de Sio -- The thermostatic model : the public, policy and politics / Christopher Wlezien -- Regime support / Pedro Magalhaes -- Generational replacement : engine of electoral change / Wouter van der Brug and Mark Franklin -- The dependent variable in election studies : studying respondents or responses as units of analysis / Cees van Der Eijk -- The quest for representative survey samples / Laura Stoker and Andrew McCall -- Horses for courses : using internet surveys for researching public opinion and voting behaviour / Edward Fieldhouse and Chris Prosser -- The use of aggregate data in the study of voting behavior : ecological inference, ecological fallacy and other applications / Luana Russo -- Election forecasting / Stephen Fisher -- Field experiments in political behavior / Donald Green and Erin A. York -- Making inferences about elections and public opinion using incidentally collected data / Jon Mellon