'In today's Britain, people vote less on who they are than on what Essay

'In today's Britain, people vote less on who they are than on what they percieve.' Evaluate this statement - Essay Example These two eras as classified are: the time period between 1945-1970, which is signified by a stability in all forms of electoral decisions; while the second era being from 1970 till date, which can be described as the era of decreasingly less identification on the part of voters with any fixed political parties. With increasingly complex behaviour of the voting patterns that were being observed in the contemporary general elections both in UK and worldwide, psephologists came up new voting models that also quite often involved statistical calculations to explain voting behaviours and patterns, and in 1990 we find that W. I. Miller propounding that voting behaviours could be easily differentiated into 6 main models. In my article I will study the shift in the UK voters’ attitude and the perceived changes in the voting patterns, by analysing the various elections that has been held in the recent times and studying the different voting models and political dealignment in British politics.  It will also analyse as to whether strong leadership within party politics does reflect in the vote results, and  if policies of the political parties play an effect in influencing the voting patterns. ... These two parties had strong ideological differences that characterised and became their symbols they stood for, and people voted according to this ideological symbolisation. As for example, the labour party believed in â€Å"high taxation, redistribution of income and wealth, a welfare state characterised by universal public services and benefits, and nationalisation of the country’s major industries[that is, a socialist state]... [While] their opponents believed in the free market in which the state played a regulatory role, with some public services and benefits for those unable to provide for themselves.†2 Thus, the Labour party’s supporters were mainly drawn from the working class level, while the Conservatives’ had their staunch supporters in the non working classes; with some support from the rural sections. The equation was very simple, with the election results depending on how much the two parties were able to get together their own staunch suppo rters while also persuading the voters that were not committed to any parties (these were labelled as the ‘floating voters’) to vote for them instead of their opponent party. This was especially seen in 1945, when a large number of the voters turned over to the Labour party, as the Conservatives were connected with the depression of the 1930s, and the voters en masse thought that giving the socialist Labour party a chance might work out things better for the general populace. In the next elections that took place (1951) we find that Conservatives took away a major share of the voters, as people found that the Labour party had become a little complacent. From this picture it is very evident that