The impact of party leaders: How blair lost labour votes

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 58, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 162-180

  Evans, Geoffrey ^a   Andersen, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27144503657     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsi065     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. R. Andersen and G. Evans, 'Who Blairs Wins? Leadership and Voting in the 2001 Election', 13 British Elections & Parties Review, 2003, pp. 229-47;
2. H.D. Clarke, D. Sanders, M. Stewart and P.F. Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain, Oxford University Press, 2004.
3. N. Assinder, BBC News Online, 17.9.03, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ uk_politics/3096172.stm.
4. See A. Cooper's question-and-answer session in The Times Online, 6.5.05, for a more balanced view, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,616-1600904,00. html.
5. See P. Cowley and J. Green, 'New leaders, same problems: The Conservatives' in A. Geddes and J. Tonge (eds), The British General Election of 2005, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, forthcoming.
6. Note also that Mori polls (on Bob Worcester's Weblog) indicate that although Mr Blair's perceived trustworthiness declined over time, so did that of the Conservative leadership. Moreover, despite much chest-beating about the recent demise of political trust, levels of public trust in 'politicians generally' (18%) and in 'government ministers' (20%) to 'tell the truth' were no lower in 2005 than they were in the early-1980s (18% and 16% in 1983) and higher than in the early-1990s (14% and 11% in 1993).
7. A. Mughan, Media and the Presidentialization of Parliamentary Elections, Palgrave, 2000;
8. C. Bean and A. Mughan, 'Leadership Effects in Parliamentary Elections in Australia and Britain', 83 American Political Science Review, 1989, pp. 1165-79;
9. I. Crewe and A. King, 'Did Major win? Did Kinnock Lose? Leadership Effects in the 1992 election' in A. Heath, R. Jowell and J. Curtice with B. Taylor (eds), Labour's Last Chance? The 1992 Election and Beyond, Dartmouth, 1984;
10. J. Curtice and S. Holmberg, 'Leaders' in Jacques Thomassen (ed.), The European Voter, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
11. Andersen and Evans, 'Who Blairs Wins?', The European Voter op. cit.;
12. Clarke, et al., Political Choice in Britain, op. cit.;
13. J. Bartle, 'Partisanship, Performance and Personality: Competing and Complementary Characterisations of the 2001 British General Election', 9 Party Politics, 2003, pp. 317-45.
14. A. King (ed.), Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections, Oxford University Press, 2002;
15. D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2001, Palgrave, 2001;
16. P. Norton, 'The Conservative Party: Is There Anyone Out There?' in A. King (ed.), Britain at the Polls, 2001, Chatham House, 2002;
17. C. Seymour-Ure, 'New Labour and the Media' in Anthony King (ed.), Britain at the Polls, 2001, Chatham House, 2002.
18. J. Bartle and I. Crewe, 'The Impact of Party Leaders in Britain: Strong Assumptions, Weak Evidence' in A. King (ed.), Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections, Oxford University Press, 2002.
19. J. Bartle 'Why Labour Won: Again' in Anthony King (ed.), Britain at the Polls 2001, Chatham House, 2002, p. 192.
20. King, Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Election, op. cit.;
21. Curtice and Holmberg, 'Leaders', Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Election op. cit.
22. Curtice and Holmberg, 'The Impact of Party Leaders in Britain', Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Election op. cit.;
23. see also King and Crewe, 'Did Major Win?, Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Election op. cit.;
24. R.M. Worcester and R. Mortimore, Explaining Labour's Landslide, Politico's, 1999.
25. Andersen and Evans, 'Who Blairs Wins?', Explaining Labour's Landslide, op. cit.;
26. Bartle, 'Why Labour Won?', Explaining Labour's Landslide, op. cit.
27. G. Evans and R. Andersen, 'Endogenizing the Economy: Political Preferences and Economic Perceptions across the Electoral Cycle", 1 Revue do la Maison Francaise d'Oxford, 2003, pp. 117-44;
28. G. Evans and R. Andersen, 'The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions', Journal of Politics, forthcoming;
29. C. Wlezien, M.N. Franklin and D. Twiggs, 'Economic Perceptions and Vote Choice: Disentangling the Endogeneity', 19 Political Behavior, 1997, pp. 7-17.
30. See, e.g. M. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections, Yale University Press, 1981.
31. G. Evans, A. Heath and M. Lalljee, 'Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate', 47 British Journal of Sociology, 1996, pp. 93-112.
32. G. Evans, 'European Integration, Party Politics and Voting in the 2001 Election', 12 British Elections & Parties Review, 2002, pp. 95-110.
33. We also included 'attention to polities' in preliminary models and tested for interactions with leadership perceptions on vote choice, but none of these effects were significant so we exclude them from the models reported here.
34. T. Hastie and R. Tibshirani, Generalized Additive Models, Chapman and Hall, 2002.
35. For the Labour vote, it was determined that the influences of appraisals of Blair were linear, but for Howard and Kennedy quadratic polynomials were necessary to capture the nonlinear trend. For the Conservative Party, the effect of Howard and Kennedy was adequately modelled with a linear trend, but a quadratic polynomial was necessary for Blair. The effects of leaders on vote for the Liberal Democrats were slightly more complicated, requiring quadratic polynomials for Blair and Howard and a cubic polynomial for Kennedy.
36. J.H. Silber, P.R. Rosenbaum and R.N. Ross, 'Comparing the Contributions of Groups of Predictors: Which Outcomes Vary with Hospital Rather than Patient Characteristics?', 90 Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1995, pp. 7-18. The measure compares the ratio of the overall contribution to the dependent variable of two sets of variables through the log of the standard deviation ratio between the two sets. In other words, the ratio of the overall contribution of a particular set of variables, X, compared with that of another set of variables, Z, should equal 0 (i.e. X/Z=1) if the two variables have equal importance in terms of their effects on Y. If the ratio is less than 0 (i.e. it is a negative number) then Z is more important than X. On the other hand, if the ratio is larger than 0 (i.e. a positive number), X is more important than Z. We use the David Firth's relimp package for R to implement the relative importance measure (http://www.warwick.ac.uk/go/relimp).
37. J. Fox, 'Effect Displays for Generalized Linear Models', 17 Sociological Methodology, 1987, pp. 347-61;
38. J. Fox, 'Effect Displays in R for Generalised Linear Models', 15 Journal of Statistical Software, 2003, pp. 1-27. Effects are calculated by finding fitted values for a set of contrived observations for all values through the range of the leadership variable in question with all control variables (including the leadership variables not being examined) set to typical values (means for quantitative variables and proportions for categories of categorical variables). We then transform the fitted values from the logit scale to the scale of the response, i.e. to the probability scale, and plot them against the leadership variable under examination.
39. See J. Fox, Applied Regression Analysis, Sage, 1997, Chapter 15.
40. Silber, Rosenbaum and Ross, 'Comparing the Contributions of Groups of Predictors', Applied Regression Analysis, 1997 op. cit. This measure compares the overall contribution to the dependent variable of two sets of variables through the log of the standard deviation ratio between the two sets.
41. Bartle and Crewe, 'The Impact of Party Leaders in Britain', Applied Regression Analysis, 1997 op. cit., p. 82;
42. see also J. Bartle, 'Homogenous Models and Heterogeneous Voters', Political Studies, forthcoming.
43. Anderson and Evans, 'Who Blairs Wins?', Political Studies, op. cit.
44. For previous disputes on such matters, see G. Evans, 'Economics and Politics Revisited: Exploring the Decline in Conservative Support, 1992-95', 47 Political Studies 1999, pp. 139-51;
45. G. Evans, 'Economics, Politics and the Pursuit of Exogeneity: Why Pattie, Johnston and Sanders are Wrong', 47 Political Studies, 1999, pp. 933-8;
46. and C. Pattie, R. Johnston and D. Sanders, 'On Babies and Bathwater: A Comment on Evans' "Economics and Politics Revisited"', 47 Political Studies 1999, pp. 918-32.
47. For an elaboration of this argument with respect to economic perceptions, see Evans and Andersen, 'Endogenizing the Economy', 47 Political Studies 1999, pp. 918-32. op. cit.
48. Evans and Anderson, 'The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions', 47 Political Studies 1999, pp. 918-32. op. cit;
49. Wlezien, Franklin and Twiggs, 'Economic Perceptions and Vote Choice', 47 Political Studies 1999, pp. 918-32. op. cit. On issues.
50. see G. Evans and R. Andersen, 'Do Issues Decide? Partisan Conditioning and Perceptions of Party Issue Positions across the Electoral Cycle', 14 British Elections and Parties Review, 2004, pp. 18-39.