Essay: Which were the most relevant forces in the two parties’ weakening hold on voter loyalties,

c.1951-2001?

Introduction

Electoral systems and voter loyalties have been studied by the many researchers for the party’s

polarization system. Researches have studied about the voter’s loyalty and different parties

weakening that are causing problems towards the voter’s loyalty. In the further section there will

be the discussion on the relevant forces which have led parties to weaken their position in terms

of loyalties, and these forces can be in terms of economic context, valence problems, de-

alignment in the parties, de-ideologies and voter’s preferences. The two parties lost support from

voters between 1951 and 2001. The party system polarization is the divergence of the political

attitude away from the center, and it is more prone towards the ideological extremes and it has

also been extensively covered in the study of multi-party politics and is significant from both a

theoretical and empirical standpoint because it is beneficial to the democracy, as the simplifying

features of the polarization helps to the democratization (Green, J., 2007). The level of party-

system polarization has been linked to factors including cabinet survival, political stability, the

success of policymaking, and the features of policy representation, to mention a few. Recent

research has looked at elements that influence how widely apart parties are on policy issues and

attempted to explain why party systems polarize in specific situations. In order to explain the

polarization of the party system, most of these studies have emphasized the importance of

electoral systems or the number of parties running for office (or both) also this study will argue

fundamentally on the voter loyalties.

Diverse viewpoints on taxes and voting behaviors:

“The diverse viewpoints can be seen for the different voting behaviors through the various

forces like taxes can be the trigging factor for the voting behavior because these are the expenses

for the voters, so on the bases of the taxes voters decides to cast their votes. According to Rose

and Karran, studies of voting behavior in Britain often show that taxes have little to no impact on

voting behavior (1987). However, during the five decades between 1951 and 2001, politicians

made the tax system—including its fairness or lack thereof, as well as the concern about

potential tax increases or reductions—a key issue in their campaigns. In the reductions of the

taxes was the positive point for the politicians to gain the loyalty of the people and make them to

cast their votes for themselves as it is reduction in the expenses of the people.

The perplexing question of whether taxes impact voter behavior is revisited using up-to-date

information which is that the taxes can be one of the main forces to weaken the parties hold on

voter’s loyalty like the income taxes paid by the various British families. British families

concentrate on the income tax because it is the tax that constantly garners the most attention

during election campaigns and because it is quite visible and track both tax attitudes and actual

tax experiences using a variety of metrics related to income tax. According to Rose and Karran,

studies of voting behavior summarizes the literature on voter behavior and taxes and the political

discussions around taxes since 1951. Hence the taxes can be one of the factor to measure the

voter’s loyalty as well, for examples some taxes which are beneficial for the country like high

taxes on the exports, but for those people who have export business might face problem and bear

high costs, but still they are casting the vote for the same party so it shows the loyalty of the

voter.
 “Then, exhibition of company’s time-series data on income tax using a micro-simulation

model of personal taxes. Analysis of how taxes affect voter’s behavior is frequently included in a

larger discussion of how economic variables affect election outcomes. It has been widely

acknowledged since the publication of Downs' seminal study in 1957 that ideological and

economic considerations impact voter behavior. Because economic considerations are fees,

reimbursement of expenses, or any valuable thing and if these things are satisfying the people so

it can impact on their voting behavior.

Election dimensions

“There has not been much research on long-term shifts in support for British political parties

since there is not enough data to compare across more than four elections” (Hawkins, A., 1989).

“In order to uncover changes in party support since 1950 and explicitly evaluate assumptions

about their nature, the research uses a recently established inductive approach for finding

geographically varied temporal trends. For a fixed set of 641 "pseudo-constituencies," it uses a

dataset of predicted vote percentages for each party spanning fifteen elections (based on those

used for the 1997 and 2001 general elections). While the support patterns for the other two

parties varied more by functional type than by geographic location, the support patterns for the

Conservatives varied more by functional type. They supported the idea of a north-south divide”

(Mudde, C., 2004).

“The party convergence is the result of a time of rising voter consensus on the crucial left-

right axis of British politics. This election agreement paired with the convergence on this

dimension by parties inevitably leads to the situation described by Stokes in 1963, where

competition is on valence concerns rather than position issues. As a consequence, competence

rather than ideological differences are employed to judge the parties. According to Harold Clarke
et al. (2004), the importance of valence politics in voter choice has never changed, while this

article asserts that the emergence of valence problems is a more recent development in the

British electoral scene, as it is important to consider the valence problems because it is people’s

judgement of the overall competence among the rival political parties. The growing agreement,

especially on left-right topics, has significant repercussions for party rivalry. Such a tendency

contradicts claims that parties are bound by the more extreme ideological stances of their

longtime followers and highlights the significance of competency assessments in party selection.

For instance, many pundits point to the core vote explanation as the primary reason for the

Conservative party's struggle in election from 1997 to 2005. Therefore, the structure discussed in

this article provides key details that assist us in comprehending how British politics compete in

two separate forms.

Downsian model

“The scholarly literature describes political parties' ideologies developed significantly in the

1970s and 1980s. The Downsian model of party competition (1957), which states that in a two-

party system, rational parties will converge around the median voter to win the most votes, was

challenged at this time by the two major British party's policy differentiation. Hence the rational

choice of the individual also matter as it deals with the self-interests of the voters to make the

final decision. Individual decisions also somehow depend on the economic situation of the

country which triggers their final decision. Party polarization has subsequently been cited as

more evidence to contradict the Downsian paradigm in the US and overseas.

The most popular alternative explanation for this divergence has been that parties are restricted

by their current supporters because more ideologically dissimilar viewpoints drive traditional

party followers. Parties position themselves closer to these people than the median stance permits
to keep this core support. The equilibrium stance will therefore be halfway seen between median

position of core voters or activists and the median voter as a whole, in accordance with these

core vote or activist principles (Yates, R., 2002).

The current British political rivalry, however, seems to corroborate the Downsian theory—that

parties gravitate forward towards the voting populace again. The fact that fewer people today

distinguish between the Conservatives and Labour supports this. This apparent lack of distinction

may be brought about by inattention to the positions taken by the parties, a lack of skill or style,

or both. However, it is likely also the result of perceived ideological uniformity. According to

British Election Studies, answers to the statement “Do the Conservatives and Labor differ? And

as per the results conservative advocates on the low taxes, free market, privatization, and reduce

government spending and debts. And these point of views also matches with labors as their

demands, because of their affordability so it shows that conservatives and labor do not differ.

Catherine et al. (2002) also find that "Never before has the voters believed that there was so little

to choose between the two main parties" based on information from the British Social Attitudes

and the British Election Study.

Diverse factors may contribute to party convergence. British parties may be just acting as

predicted by Downsianism, renouncing the impulse to incline toward their fewer representative

constituents. The importance of the third centrist party may present the two big parties with

greater incentives to converge. The incentives to compete ideologically may decrease due to

broader trends in leader-centered elections. However, there are solid reasons to believe that party

activists will no longer function quite a trade-off in terms of the geographic location of the

median voter, allowing parties to converge by core vote or activist theories of the party location.

The commonly held empirical presumption that party supporters inevitably polarize towards the
extremes of the ideological spectrum to the left and right is challenged by this theory. Three

patterns support the forecast of voter consensus.”

First, as a result of political de-alignment, we might anticipate less ideological polarization. Party

identification strength is significantly connected with ideological polarization. Thus we may

anticipate a reduction in polarization when party attachment strength diminishes. Therefore, the

more moderate we anticipate the electorate to be overall, the bigger the share of weakly

identifying partisans. According to Stokes (1992), valence politics is associated with the waning

of these party attachments since they were based on positional problems. Therefore, since

undecided voters or core supporters are more likely to moderate, a de-aligned electorate

incentivizes parties to compete at the center. Traditional social divides have been blending along

with de-alignment, which might also be predicted to encourage moderation. When a result,

Adam Przeworski and John Sprague (1985) emphasize the necessity for socially democratic

parties to moderate as the fraction of the electorate made up of members of the working class

drops.

“The second expectation is that party organizations will "de-ideologies" and, more

importantly, focus more on valence problems to transform electoral into profession or include all

the parties and win elections. Because of the two-party system in the UK, Giovanni Sartori

(1976) also anticipated this centripetal trend. The transition of New Labor was an example of

such a transformation to attain centrist patterns of competitiveness.”

“Whereas if two political parties have undergone such a procedure of ideologizing — for

New Labour in the form of seeming to concur on important issues while for the Conservative,

handing up their identity as Thatcherites — supporters may move their parties it towards the

middle. Following the 1995 revisions to the party constitution, and Paul et.al (1999), the Labour
party's members underwent an ideological transformation. A link between party position as well

as the self-placement of party supporters in 2004. In contrast to the long-held belief that stronger

ideological voting is significantly correlated with political establishment, the opposite may now

be true (Pierce, 1970).”

Lastly, given the external economic and political context, it is conceivable that some topics

fail to embody contemporary political dispute. For instance, issues linked to employment levels

and inflation, which were once seen as incompatible trade-offs and highly controversial, are far

less so (McLean and Jennings, 2006). Similarly, concerns over the planned expansion of

industrial privatization may be mentioned. It does not make sense to support more privatization

given how many firms were privatized in the 1980s, and given how unimportant the topic is right

now, we may expect people to be hesitant.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, the main findings has been taxations, economical factors, ideological polarization,

valence problems and other factors which explained the weakening of parties on voters loyalty

from 1951-2001, how voter preferences would become more evenly distributed, and how

politicians would compete more fiercely on the left-right axis. However, the European issue

would show the reverse tendency. These predictions came true.”

"Growing agreement among party voters and perceived party views may be shown by the

left-right component. Due to the evident prominence of valence theories of British voting

behavior and the continuous exposure of valence concerns, this development has significant

consequences for political competitiveness. Stokes characterized the period of valence

difficulties as a "poor ideological focus" (1963). According to the evidence given in this article,

British politics adhere to a similar.”

 “The fact that party voters agree is an important and undervalued explanation for party

convergence while keeping in mind a causal link between voter position and parties and vice

versa. It indicates that the EU component has evolved from being a cross-cutting issue that

divided supporters of all groups and none to a more consensus distribution, and finally towards a

more positional distribution, where preferences are separated by party support. A theoretical

model was presented to explain why party convergence and voter agreement on the left-right axis

produce competence ratings in a logical voting utility model based on issues. On the other hand,

we should expect the European dimension to follow the geographical ideological voting model.

The concepts of Downsian competition are not in conflict, despite the spatial model's possible

reduced predictive power. There are some voters who understand the changing in the policies

which are beneficial for the country even their personal cost is greater than the country’s benefit

but still they vote for that particular party, despite from the race and colour voters still vote for

the betterment and this also defines the voters’ loyalty. ”

References:

1. Green, J., 2007. When voters and parties agree: Valence issues and party competition. Political

Studies, 55(3), pp.629-655.

2. Hawkins, A., 1989. ‘Parliamentary Government’and Victorian Political Parties, c. 1830–c1880.

The English Historical Review, 104(CCCCXII), pp.638-669.

3. Mudde, C., 2004. The populist zeitgeist. Government and opposition, 39(4), pp.541-563.

4. Johns, R. and Brandenburg, H., 2014. Giving voters what they want? Party orientation

perceptions and preferences in the British electorate. Party Politics, 20(1), pp.89-104.

5. Sobolewska, M. and Ford, R., 2020. Brexitland: Identity, diversity and the reshaping of British

politics. Cambridge University Press.

6. Yates, R., 2002. A brief history of British drug policy, 1950-2001. Drugs: Education,

Prevention and Policy, 9(2), pp.113-124.