Party Image and Party Leaders

A judicious comparison of the parties’ stances across the full range of issues might still be regarded as the way that voters should decide. However, it is obviously an extreme case: at most, a tiny minority of people really do choose in that way (and probably few people ever did). The key conclusion from the previous chapters is not the trivial point that British voters are unlikely to pore over party manifestos. The point is rather that issues and policies, long regarded as the main currency of electoral politics, actually carry much less influence over voting behaviour than has generally been supposed. One reason for this is that a substantial proportion of voters continue to identify quite strongly with one of the parties and, as a consequence, tend to approve of its policies and performance on an issue anyway. Yet, even if dealignment has meant that many ‘voters begin to choose’, there remain two key reasons why these choices are not driven by policy. One reason has to do with limits on voters’ political awareness. Few have detailed knowledge about parties’ policies, let alone over multiple issues, and there are easier ways of choosing between parties than by accumulating such information at election time. Second, for much of the post-war period in Britain, even if a diligent voter did undertake a comparison of policy positions then he or she would have found more similarities than differences. Issue stances are not a very useful basis for choice during such periods of consensus. Instead, parties compete — and voters choose between them — on the basis of general impressions of competence. With the parties broadly agreed on the objectives of governing, the decision concerns which party is most likely to achieve those objectives. In short, despite dealignment, electoral choice continues to be more about parties than about issues.