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Identifying the True Party Identifiers: A Question Wording Experiment David Sanders, Jonathan Burton and Jack Kneeshaw Party Politics 2002; 8; 193 DOI: 10.1177/1354068802008002003 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ppq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/2/193

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London

Thousand Oaks

New Delhi

IDENTIFYING THE TRUE PARTY IDENTIFIERS A Question Wording Experiment David Sanders, Jonathan Burton and Jack Kneeshaw ABSTRACT

The paper reviews the evidence that the measure of party identification (or partisanship) routinely used in social surveys and national election studies is flawed due to the fact that it overestimates the number of party identifiers in any given sample. The results of a 12-month survey experiment are reported to show that an alternative measure of party identification, one that does not prompt respondents with the names of the political parties and allows respondents a clear opportunity to register a ‘non-identity’, substantially reduces the proportion of reported party identifiers.

KEY WORDS mis-specification party identification political preferences splitsample survey

Since 1964, successive British Election Studies (BES) have measured party identification (or partisanship) using a modified version of the question that was originally devised for the American National Election Study. Although minor modifications have been made to the wording, we now have a lengthy time-series of measures of ‘very strong’, ‘fairly strong’ and ‘not very strong’ party identifiers covering every general election since 1964. The need for ‘continuity’ in survey measures over time argues for maintaining the current form of the question. We argue here that the evidence is now overwhelming that the current question wording produces a flawed measure of partisanship. Accordingly, future election studies should aim to provide an accurate measure of partisanship, even if this involves ‘breaking the time-series’. Part 1 of the paper reviews the now considerable body of evidence that the existing BES question battery does not adequately capture voters’ ‘real’ party identifications. Part 2 proposes an alternative measure of partisanship based on changes in the way the party identification question is asked and reports 1354-0688(200203)8:2;193–205;021394

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the results of a 12-month survey experiment conducted during 1998–9. Part 3 explores some of the problems of model mis-specification that arise from using the ‘traditional’ measure of partisanship and, by comparing simple models of vote choice using both the ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ measures, suggests that the continued use of the ‘traditional’ measure of partisanship may cause us to incorrectly estimate models of vote choice.

1. Doubts about Current Measures of Party Identification Party identification is the stable and enduring attachment that a voter feels towards a particular political party. For advocates of the social-psychological approach to voting, the attachment is an emotional or affective one that derives from past socialization experiences (Campbell et al., 1960 and 1966). For rational choice theorists, the attachment is more of a cognitive short-cut that represents a running tally of retrospective assessments of party performance (Fiorina, 1981). In both cases, the crucial point is that partisan identity disposes the individual both to vote for the party in different elections and to interpret new political information in ways that are sympathetic to the party’s interests and policy stances. The idea that partisanship is relatively stable over time helps to explain why the vote shares of the major parties do not vary much between general elections. Most voters – the party identifiers – tend to support the same party over a series of elections. It is only the so-called ‘floaters’ or ‘independents’ that frequently change views and, in so doing, cause one party rather than another to win a given election. It is sometimes suggested that to claim that ‘an individual votes for Party X because he or she identifies with it’ does not constitute much of an explanation of vote. If there were little difference between identifying with a party and voting for it, this would be a fair criticism. However, for proponents of party identification theory, there is an important difference. Partisanship is a long-term, underlying predisposition. Voting is a specific act in which current exigencies and calculations can in principle over-ride partisanship and result in partisans casting their votes for parties other than those with which they identify. It follows from this defence of partisanship that party identification must be capable of being measured independently of current voting preference. If it can, then partisanship can legitimately be used to ‘explain’ current preference. If it cannot, then any model that purports to explain current preference by reference to partisanship is mere tautology. This is not to suggest that partisanship is necessarily a tautological phenomenon. There are many voters whose current voting preferences are best understood as deriving largely from their long-term party identifications. Like many electoral analysts, we have conducted qualitative interviews with numerous party identifiers whose long-term dispositions and current voting preferences were entirely consistent with partisanship theory 194

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and whose voting behaviour could not be explained without reference to something like partisanship. The crucial question is whether or not a particular way of measuring party identification distinguishes partisanship from current voting preference. It is in this context that several analysts (identified below) have articulated doubts about the validity of the standard BES question sequence as a measuring instrument. All have expressed the view that the BES battery significantly over-estimates the proportion of voters who are categorized as identifiers. Since 1964, with minor variations in wording, the BES has assessed respondents’ party identifications as follows: ‘Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as Conservative, Labour, Liberal-Democrat, (Nationalist) or what?’

Respondents who specify a particular party are then asked ‘Would you call yourself a very strong [name of party], fairly strong or not very strong?’

Respondents who answer ‘none’ or ‘don’t know’ to the first question are asked ‘Do you generally think of yourself as closer to one of the parties than the others?’ IF YES, ‘Which party is that?’

The responses to these questions in successive BES surveys produce the results shown in Table 1. The table suggests three main conclusions. First, the proportion of ‘very strong’ identifiers, i.e. those respondents who ‘think of themselves as’ one party or another and whose identification is ‘very strong’, has fallen progressively from almost 44 percent in 1964 to below 15 percent in 1997. Second, the proportion of voters who identify with one of the three major parties, i.e. those respondents who ‘think of themselves as’ Conservative, Labour or Liberal-Democrat, has generally averaged around 85 percent of the electorate since the mid-1960s (although it fell briefly in the mid-1980s). Third, this relatively stable proportion of identifiers overall reflects the fact that the decline in ‘very strong’ identifiers has been more or less matched by the rise in ‘not very strong’ identifiers. The key question is whether or not all of these measured identifiers can plausibly be regarded as ‘genuine’ partisans. A variety of arguments have been adduced to suggest that they cannot. Brynin and Sanders (1997) note the way in which aggregate Gallup timeseries measures of partisanship have closely corresponded to measures of voting intentions. They argue that this time-series correlation implies that the standard BES partisanship questions are perhaps measuring current party preferences rather than voters’ ‘stable and enduring affective attachments’. They examine this proposition more formally using British Household Panel Study data for the period 1991–2. They conduct convergent validity tests, which show that measures of party identification and voting choice correlate identically with a range of other theoretically relevant 195

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Table 1. Measured levels of party identification in Britain, 1964–97, using the ‘traditional’ question sequence 1974o

1979

1983

1987

1992

1997

Very strong identifiers Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat All very strong identifiers

19.1 20.9 3.8 43.8

17.2 22.1 3.4 42.7

19.6 19.8 2.0 41.4

11.4 16.3 3.1 30.8

9.3 14.3 4.8 28.4

9.0 10.2 1.6 20.8

9.1 8.7 1.3 19.1

8.5 7.9 1.2 17.6

8.1 7.7 0.9 16.7

9.0 10.0 0.7 14.7

Fairly strong identifiers Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat All fairly strong identifiers

15.5 15.7 5.7 36.9

13.7 18.5 5.2 37.4

15.1 16.8 4.0 35.9

17.4 17.4 9.2 44.0

18.1 19.0 9.2 48.3

20.4 18.3 5.7 44.4

17.0 12.5 5.4 34.9

18.6 13.0 4.6 36.2

20.2 15.0 4.7 39.9

12.8 20.5 5.0 38.3

Not very strong identifiers Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat All not very strong identifiers

4.1 4.6 2.0 10.7

4.3 4.3 1.0 9.6

4.0 5.5 1.6 11.1

6.3 6.2 0.0 12.5

6.4 6.0 0.0 12.4

7.7 7.2 4.0 18.9

8.0 8.2 3.8 20.0

8.1 7.7 4.5 20.3

10.6 9.0 5.1 24.7

10.7 14.1 6.7 31.5

All Conservative All Labour All Liberal (Democrat)

38.7 41.2 11.5

35.2 44.9 9.6

37.7 42.1 7.6

35.1 39.9 12.3

33.8 39.3 14.0

37.3 35.7 11.3

34.1 29.4 10.5

33.2 28.8 10.3

38.9 31.7 10.7

32.5 44.6 12.4

All identifiers (excluding nationalists)

91.4

89.7

88.4

87.3

87.1

84.1

74.0

74.1

81.3

84.5

Source: British Election Studies. Cell entries are column percentages, measured as a percentage of all respondents.

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variables – that they are statistically indistinguishable. Brynin and Sanders (1997) conclude that this is because both measures reflect voters’ current political preferences; they do not measure distinct phenomena. Blais et al. (1999) argue that the standard partisanship battery encourages respondents to admit to a partisan identification even if they do not possess one. This is because the initial question in the sequence does not invite respondents to indicate that they do not ‘generally think’ of themselves in any sort of party political terms. Blais et al. suggest that a prior ‘filter question’ is needed which allows respondents explicitly to indicate that they do not generally think of themselves as being supporters of a particular political party. Blais et al. argue that if a filter were to be used, then the estimated percentage of non-partisans would increase significantly. They test this supposition by conducting ‘one-shot’ split-sample survey experiments in Canada, the US and Britain. Half the sample in each country was asked the ‘traditional’ Michigan party identification sequence, as used in the BES. The other half was asked a filter question enquiring of respondents whether they generally thought of themselves as being supporters of a particular party. If they did not think of themselves in this way, they were immediately coded as non-identifiers. Using this split sample approach, Blais et al. (1999) find that measured partisanship using the filter is considerably lower than with the traditional question sequence. In Canada, switching from the traditional question to the filter approach reduces measured party identification levels from 70 percent to 40 percent of the electorate; in the US, identification falls from 70 percent to 60 percent; and in Britain, it falls from around 90 percent to under 50 percent. Blais et al. (1999) conclude that traditional measures of partisanship significantly overestimate the true proportion of non-partisans among the electorate in a number of different countries. Bartle and Crewe (2000) engage in a three-pronged critique of current partisanship measures. They note, firstly, that major changes in measured partisanship coincide with major shifts in vote. For example, Labour partisanship fell considerably in 1983, the year when Labour’s vote share fell to a disastrous 28 percent. Similarly, Conservative partisanship fell alarmingly in 1997 – at the same time as it recorded its worst general election performance since 1931. The problem here is that partisanship is supposed to be a stable and enduring characteristic, which presumably should endure independently of current voting preferences. Accordingly, this tendency for partisanship and vote to move together adds further weight to concerns that the traditional partisanship instrument may measure current party preference rather than ‘real’ partisanship. The second component in Bartle and Crewe’s critique involves a series of discussions with focus groups. They invited their respondents to indicate their understandings of a range of questions designed to measure party identification, including the traditional BES partisanship sequence. They find no clear evidence that the BES sequence invokes understandings among 197

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their participants that correspond to its advocates’ claims about the enduring character of partisanship. Thirdly, Bartle and Crewe (2000) carry out a split-sample survey experiment analogous to that conducted by Blais et al. (1999) Bartle and Crewe (2000), however, repeat their experiment each month over the course of a year. They find that, using a question that explicitly invites respondents to indicate they have no long-term party attachment produces an average of 32 percent non-identifiers – a significantly higher figure than the 11 percent estimate associated with the traditional measure. Finally, Johnston and Pattie (1996) use BHPS data for the period 1991–4 to show the extent of individual-level instability in responses to party identification questions. They find that, when the same individuals are asked at different points in time whether they ‘generally support’ a particular party, the proportion of respondents who consistently name the same party is markedly smaller than would be anticipated by conventional partisanship measures. Johnston and Pattie conclude that partisanship is ‘stable and enduring’ for only a tiny proportion of the electorate. Table 2 extends and refines their findings to cover the period 1991–7. The table reports the proportion of respondents who retained the same measured partisanship over successive three-year periods or ‘rolling windows’. For example, of those respondents who answered the partisanship question battery in the first three BHPS waves (1991–3), only 9.5 percent ‘identified’ with the Conservatives in all three waves. This figure compares with 29.2 percent who consistently indicated that they had no partisan identification and fully 52 percent who changed their partisanship response at least once during the 1991–3 period. Overall, the pattern of BHPS results in Table 2 contrasts sharply with the traditional BES patterns as reported in Table 1. The BES data indicate that, during the 1990s, partisanship levels were consistently in excess of 80 percent. Even if ‘not very strong’ identifiers are excluded, measured partisanship exceeded 60 percent of the electorate in both 1992 and 1997. Yet with BHPS data, throughout the 1990s the proportion of voters who retained the same measured partisanship for at least three years Table 2. Dynamic measures of partisanship derived from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991–7 Waves 1–3 1991–3 Consistent Conservative 9.5 Consistent Labour 7.9 Consistent Liberal Democrat 1.3 Consistent non-supporter 29.2 Inconsistent across waves 52.1

Waves 2–4 1992–4

Waves 3–5 1993–5

Waves 4–6 1994–6

Waves 5–7 1995–7

8.9 9.4 1.1 30.4 50.2

7.6 10.5 1.0 34.1 46.8

7.4 11.1 0.9 37.4 43.2

6.9 12.5 1.0 33.8 45.8

Cell entries are column percentages. The 9.5 in the top left cell means that 9.5% of respondents who answered the party identification question in waves 1–3 were consistent Conservative identifiers.

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barely approached 20 percent of the electorate. This disparity is enormous. Whatever else the traditional BES partisanship question measures, it does not capture voters’ stable or enduring attachments to the major political parties. Indeed, the BHPS data demonstrate convincingly that the partisan ‘attachments’ exhibited by most British voters are neither stable nor enduring.

2. The Split-Sample Survey Experiment The clear implication of these BHPS findings is that ‘real’ partisanship – partisanship that endures over time – can only be measured effectively with panel data. The sheer cost of conducting such panels, however, means that survey-based electoral research will continue to need to estimate partisanship on the basis of single-shot cross-section surveys. In these circumstances, we still need to devise the best-possible, single time-point estimates of voters’ partisanship status. The approach adopted here follows Blais et al. (1999) in using a split-sample design and a filter to establish whether or not the notion of ‘usually supporting’ a particular party has any resonance with respondents. The ‘control’ half of our sample was asked the traditional opening partisanship question: ‘Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Nationalist or what?’

The ‘test’ half of the sample was questioned as follows: ‘I am now going to ask you a question about party politics in Britain. Some people think of themselves as usually being a supporter of one political party rather than another. Setting aside your current views about the government and opposition parties, do you usually think of yourself as being a supporter of one particular party or not?’ IF YES, ‘Which one is that?’ IF NO, ‘Is that because you: Don’t think of yourself as usually being a supporter of one political party rather than another Don’t participate in politics Don’t know Refuse to say’

The test question is different from the control question in two important respects. First, it gives respondents every opportunity to indicate that they do not ‘usually support’ a party. Second, by excluding any mention of specific party labels, it does not artificially cue the respondent to indicate an ‘identification’ with one of the major parties: unless a respondent specifies a party that s/he ‘usually supports’ without prompting, it seems unlikely that s/he genuinely ‘identifies’ with it. 199

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These questions were addressed to a random sample of the British electorate, interviewed by ICM as a supplement to its regular monthly telephone survey, each month for the period November 1998 to October 1999. The results are given in Table 3. Several observations need to be made about the table. First, there is some month-to-month variation in identification levels that results from the relatively low number of cases (typically around N = 550) in each of the sub-samples. Overall, however, the monthly pattern exhibits the sort of general over-time stability that would be expected during a period when voting intentions remained broadly constant. Second, the proportion of the electorate classified as ‘identifiers’ varies markedly according to the question asked. On average (see the pooled estimates at the foot of Table 3), the traditional question, in line with BES evidence, shows that over 80 percent of respondents identify with one or other of the parties, with only 16 percent clearly classified as non-identifiers. The revised question, in contrast, immediately categorizes 49 percent of respondents as non-identifiers – 35 percent because they explicitly do not think of themselves as party supporters and 12 percent because they do not participate in politics at all. If credence is given to these responses – and we see no reason why it should not be – this again provides clear evidence that the BES sequence radically overstates the overall level of partisanship. A third point that arises from Table 3 is that, although the revised estimates of partisanship levels are not as low as those observed with BHPS data, the ‘new’ measure produces similar results to those obtained by Blais et al. (1999) and by Bartle and Crewe (2000). Blais et al. (1999), as noted above, estimate that around half of British voters are partisans – almost the same figure as that produced by the revised question in Table 3. Similarly, using their revised question, Bartle and Crewe (2000) estimate that 32 percent of their sample are clear non-identifiers. By the same token, the follow-up to our revised question indicates that 35 percent of our sample do not think of themselves in partisan terms. This convergence of findings suggests that minor variations in question wording do not substantially alter the general pattern of response that is elicited from survey respondents. The key to obtaining more realistic estimates of partisanship levels is the principle of giving respondents a clear option that allows them to indicate that they have no long-term partisan attachments.

3. Why Does the Measurement of Party Identification Matter? There are three broad reasons why it is important to measure partisanship correctly. First, as a measure of the ‘core strength’ of political parties, partisanship offers both an important characterization of the way in which the party system is evolving in a particular country and a signal to political parties as to how they can best develop electoral strategy. Second, the more 200

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Table 3. Results of 12 split-sample surveys of British voters, November 1998 to October 1999 Traditional partisanship measure

Con %

Lab %

Lib %

No Will PID not % say%

597 583 559 603 623 618 585 541 613 594 597 552

24 27 22 21 25 26 24 25 23 21 23 23

41 40 44 41 39 35 43 36 38 38 40 39

13 9 10 12 10 12 9 12 10 10 11 9

8 16 17 14 19 18 15 12 18 21 15 18

Total 7035 24

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct

Revised partisanship measure

Con %

Lab %

Don’t Don’t No Lib think take PID % self % part % %

8 3 2 3 3 6 3 2 5 5 3 3

605 626 574 608 594 587 620 526 587 610 605 562

16 18 20 16 15 14 15 19 14 13 19 16

27 28 24 28 27 24 29 29 28 24 22 29

5 3 4 4 4 3 7 3 4 3 5 5

34 33 38 36 39 41 30 31 34 37 32 34

12 11 10 7 9 9 12 11 15 17 16 11

50 47 50 45 50 53 44 43 50 55 50 47

7104

The surveys were conducted by ICM as a supplement to its regular monthly political survey. Interviews were conducted by telephone. Unweighted results reported. Cell entries are row percentages. Rounding may mean some figures do not sum to 100. The figures reported under ‘Total’ are derived from pooling all the cases in a single sample. Response categories for the traditional question were: Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat Nationalist Other party No party stated/don’t know Refused/will not say The ‘No PID’ figures reported for the traditional question include ‘no party stated’ and ‘refused/will not say’ categories. Response categories for the revised question sequence were: Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat Nationalist Other party Don’t think of self as party supporter Don’t participate in politics Don’t know Refused to answer The ‘No PID’ figures reported for the revised question include ‘don’t think . . .’, ‘don’t participate . . .’ and ‘refused to answer’ categories. Strength of partisanship was not probed in either sub-sample.

accurately that partisanship is measured – and, in particular, the more clearly its measurement is differentiated from vote choice – the more convincing it becomes as a non-tautological explanation of vote. The third, related, reason is that, if partisanship is tautologically related to vote, then 201

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any model of vote choice which includes partisanship as an ‘exogenous’ variable is mis-specified. The potential consequences of this mis-specification include the risk that the model’s summary statistics will be distorted and the possibility that the effects of other exogenous variables on vote may be incorrectly estimated. An illustration of these potential difficulties is provided in Table 4. The table reports simple models of Conservative and Labour vote choice for the experimental data that we collected in 1998/99. The independent variable set is limited by the data that ICM collects as part of its regular monthly survey. Nonetheless, all the candidate variables have been shown in previous research to be related to vote choice (Butler and Stokes, 1974; Sarlvik and Crewe, 1983; Heath et al., 1985, 1991, 1994). The models compare the effects of using the traditional, ‘encompassing’ BES measure of partisanship with the effects of using our more restrictive, revised measure. The most obvious differences between the models are the pseudo-R2 Table 4. Models of Conservative and Labour voting intentions, using ‘traditional’ and ‘revised’ measures of party identification; pooled monthly survey data, November 1998 to October 1999 Models of Conservative voting intention/not Traditional Conservative identification/not Revised Conservative identification/not Traditional Labour identification/not Revised Labour identification/not Male/not Age North/not Social class AB/not Social class C1/not Owner-occupier/not Unemployed/not Cars in household School age children/not Constant N of cases Nagelkerke Pseudo R2 Percent correct Chi-squared

Models of Labour voting intention/not

5.00** 4.38*** 4.20*** 3.62*** 0.06 0.14*** .31** 0.20 0.20 0.06 0.17 0.17** 0.03

0.08 0.05 0.43*** 0.15 0.03 0.03 0.18 0.18*** 0.10

0.13 0.17*** 0.09 0.01 0.09 0.25* 0.12 0.19*** 0.05

0.03 0.21*** 0.11 0.16* 0.20** 0.15 0.02 0.16*** 0.19**

3.84*** 2.41*** 0.63*** 0.37** 4832 4835 4832 4835 0.74 0.56 0.65 0.46 94 90 88 76 3420 2344 3275 2035

Estimation is by logistic regression. *** Coefficient significant at 0.001; ** at 0.01; * at 0.10.

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measures of overall model fit. For both the Conservative voter model and the Labour voter model, the pseudo-R2 value is much lower using the revised measure. Whilst partisanship remains much the most important predictor of vote choice for both the Conservative and Labour models, the importance of partisanship is reduced in each case. The implication here is that the use of the traditional measure gives a false sense of the explanatory power of the vote choice models. By making it difficult for non-partisans to decline a party label, it would appear that, for some people at least, the traditional measure of party identity taps precisely the same attitudes as the voting intention question, thus causing the effects of the partisanship variable to be overestimated. Unusually in political science, therefore, it can be argued that a poorer-fitting model (i.e. a model with a lower R2 value) is a good thing: what is lost in predictive power is gained in the accuracy of estimates. Equally importantly, there are significant differences in the apparent impact of the other independent variables included in our analyses, which could lead to false causal inferences being drawn. In the Conservative models, the age variable is significant in the equation using the traditional partisanship measure, but non-significant when the revised partisanship measure is employed. In the Labour models, the ‘social class’ and ‘schoolage children’ variables are non-significant using the traditional measure but significant when the revised measure is used. We do not wish to put too much emphasis on the substantive importance of these specific results. However, they do indicate clearly how hypotheses about the effects of certain variables (age in the Conservative model; class and school-age children in the Labour equation) can be falsely rejected when an encompassing definition of partisanship – in our view, an unjustifiable one – is included in the model specification.

Conclusion Party identification has long been both pivotal and contentious as a variable that contributes to the explanation of voting in British elections. It has been pivotal because there are – still – clearly many voters who think of themselves as long-term party supporters and who remain loyal to the same party across different elections. It has been contentious because there have always been general doubts about how partisanship should be measured and specific concern that the ‘traditional’ BES measure is so encompassing that it is tautologically related to vote. We have shown here that, if survey respondents are given a clear opportunity to indicate that they do not think of themselves as long-term supporters of a particular party, then the measured level of partisanship is significantly lower than that obtained using the traditional BES approach. Indeed, we estimate on this basis that little more than half of the UK electorate can realistically be regarded as genuine partisans. We also recognize that, if more dynamic, panel-based measures 203

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are employed, then this figure falls even further. However, given that it is still necessary to measure partisanship in cross-sectional surveys, the sort of approach to partisanship measurement we advocate here has important lessons for the way that party identification is measured in future British Election Studies.

Note The research was supported by a grant from the British Academy. The authors are grateful to John Bartle for supplying them with an early draft of his recent work on party identification.

References Bartle, John and Ivor Crewe (2000) ‘The Measurement of Party Identification (Or Not, as the Case may Be)’. Paper presented to Department of Government seminar, University of Essex, February. Blais, Andre, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte (1999) ‘Measuring Party Identification: Canada, Britain and the United States’. Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September. Brynin, Malcolm and David Sanders (1997) ‘Party Identification, Political Preferences and Material Conditions: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991–92’, Party Politics 3: 53–77. Butler, David and Donald E. Stokes (1974) Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice. London: Macmillan. Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes (1960) The American Voter. New York: Wiley. Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald Stokes (1966) Elections and the Political Order. London: Wiley. Fiorina, Morris P. (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press. Heath, Anthony, Roger Jowell and John Curtice (1985) How Britain Votes. Oxford: Pergamon. Heath, Anthony, Roger Jowell, John Curtice, Geoffrey Evans, Julia Field and Sharon Witherspoon (1991) Understanding Political Change. Oxford: Pergamon. Heath, Anthony, Roger Jowell and John Curtice (eds) (1994) Labour’s Last Chance? The 1992 Election and Beyond. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Johnston, R. J. and C. J. Pattie (1996) ‘The Strength of Party Identification among the British Electorate: An Exploration’, Electoral Studies 15: 295–309. Sarlvik, Bo and Ivor Crewe (1983) Decade of Dealignment: The Conservative Victory of 1979 and Electoral Trends in the 1970s. London: Cambridge University Press.

DAVID SANDERS is Professor of Government at the University of Essex. He is also co-editor of the British Journal of Political Science and has written on

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international relations, British foreign policy as well as electoral behaviour and election forecasting. ADDRESS: Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ. [email: sanders@essex.ac.uk]

JONATHAN BURTON is a Senior Survey Reseach Officer at the Institute for Social and Economic Reports at the University of Essex. His doctoral thesis examined the problems of non-response in sample surveys. ADDRESS: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ. [email: jburton@essex.ac.uk]

JACK KNEESHAW is a doctoral student in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. His thesis focuses on the use of public opinion in health care policy making. ADDRESS: Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ. [email: kneej@essex.ac.uk] Paper submitted 9 November 2000; accepted for publication 19 June 2001.

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