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The book offers a definitive account of how the geography of voting at British general elections has changed over the last half century. It shows how social and economic trends and changes in the appeal of parties to different groups of people have led to a reordering of the geography of party support.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- 1: Redrawing the electoral map
- 2: How changing demography drives electoral change
- 3: Electoral change in England and Wales
- 4: How places vote
- 5: Relative decline (and growth) and the changing electoral geography of England and Wales
- 6: In search of Red and Blue heartlands
- 7: Why place matters: Insights from Merseyside and Lincolnshire
- 8: Conclusion
- References
About the author
Jamie Furlong is a Research Fellow at the University of Westminster, where he is currently involved in quantitative research aiming to understand the impact of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in London and across the UK. Previously, he worked at the Labour Party HQ initially as a Targeting Analyst and then as Targeting and Analysis Manager. This followed on from a PhD in Social Statistics at the University of Southampton studying changes in British electoral geography, which served as his inspiration for this book. He has broad research interests spanning human geography: from urban, environmental, and social policy to political, economic, and electoral geography.
Will Jennings is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Southampton and Elections Analyst for Sky News. He has held Research Fellowships at the University of Manchester and the London School of Economics and Political Science and completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford. He specializes in the study of public opinion and public policy. His books include Olympic Risks (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The Politics of Competence: Parties, Public Opinion and Voters (with Jane Green; CUP, 2017), and The British General Election of 2019 (with Robert Ford, Tim Bale, and Paula Surridge; Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Summary
The book offers a definitive account of how the geography of voting at British general elections has changed over the last half century. It shows how social and economic trends and changes in the appeal of parties to different groups of people have led to a reordering of the geography of party support.
Additional text
They take a particular look at so-called 'left behind' places, some of which became associated with 'Red Wall' constituencies that famously switched from Labour to Conservative. The authors make a useful distinction between places that are demographically left behind with an ageing population, those economically left behind due to socio-economic deprivation and a third class of those left behind because of insecure employment (and often insecure housing tenancy). This last category of 'precariat' voters are far more likely to vote Labour than the others. It is then not surprising that two of Labour's bills announced in the King's Speech strengthen tenant and employment rights.
