The 2009 European Elections and local elections was yet another demonstration of rationality. The United Kingdom under Gordon Brown’s failed leadership just came out from a recession; unemployment was high and the economy was poor. Together with the public’s opposition to further integration with the European Union and unlimited immigration, the Conservatives hammered Labour by gaining 27.7% of the vote. Labour was beaten into third place with only 16.5% of the vote. In the Council Elections, the Conservatives top the results table with 38% of the electoral vote; Labour was beating into third place by the Liberal Democrats only gaining 23% of the vote. As seen, the voters have behaved rationally as they are voting for change and seeking alternative due to the widely considered poor display of governing and leadership on Brown’s behalf.
Arguably, the FPTP electoral system which is used in the General Election promotes the results to be of “rational choice”. This is because the FPTP system favours the three mainstream “big-boys”, therefore, ruling out extremist, radical parties in gaining seats making all the elected MPs seem like “rational choices”. However, the result is of cause artificially altered and therefore does not genuinely represent the true rationality and behaviour of the voters.
However, on the other hand it is argued that the Rational Choice model is weak and is not true. Those who support this side of the arguments believe factors such as demographics and ethnicity, party identification and social class, the use of tactical voting, negative campaigning and appeal on emotion and influence from media.
The impacts of demographics and ethnicity should not be underestimated. For example, there are reports showing that there is a gender gap for voters of the Conservative Party: in 1992 38% of Tory voters were men whilst 44% were woman, this trend continued until 2001 and the gap gradually minimized over time. Commentators are suggesting that it is due to the Conservative party respecting ideas such as the traditional female roles. As for ethnicity, it is a fact that ethnicity plays a determinant part in voting. Reports show that 70% of Asians and 80% of Blacks supports the Labour Party.
Party identification and Social Class is another factor people take into account of when they vote. It is believed that people would often go hand in hand with their class alignment and vote accordingly. An example statistic would be that the 48% of the poorest voting class votes for Labour, whilst only 25% supports the Tories. However, there is a trend of voting by social class falling as the gap between the poor voters voting Conservatives and Labour is gradually narrowing.
Emotion plays a great part in elections too as human beings naturally have feelings; most of the times, emotional voters are attracted to make a “protest vote” by extremist parties who based their campaign on negative attacks on the main stream parties. An example would be the British National Party gaining 6.2% of the vote in the 2009 European Elections winning 2 seats in the European Parliament. Voters have obviously voted for Nick Griffin’s party due to them believing the party satisfy their desperate needs in then the contemporary time. The voters obviously have not voted rationally as most of them are not fascists but wanted to give a big smacking to the mainstream parties for failing them. However, such action is irresponsible and dangerous.
In this country where we operate by a FPTP system in General Elections, some voters feel that it would be more political intelligent to vote tactically. This means they will vote for a candidate which is not their first choice in order to prevent their least favoured candidate from winning. An example would be the Get Rid of Them alliance formed by Bruce Kent in attempt to stop the Conservatives winning their 5th term. It taught how voters should vote tactically in different constituencies in order to keep the Tories out; sometimes it involved Labour supporters voting Liberal Democrats in areas where Lib Dems stand a better chance or vice versa. GROT did achieve their goal at the end as Blair was voted in, however it is difficult to measure how much of it was due to them.
The media also plays a big role in elections and sometimes, the more extremist and bias newspapers can cause voters to vote irrationally. Newspaper like The Sun have readers which are less politically educated voters, who will vote accordingly to their newspaper. Such voters are not voting as the Rational Choice Model suggests, as they are not evaluating parties for themselves, by themselves but rather voting as their newspaper suggests. An example would be The Sun choosing to endorse the Conservatives in the next election; although the results are yet to be seen it is very likely that some media-driven voters, less rational will believe that “Labour has lost it”.
In conclusion, I do believe there are obvious reasons supported by other voting behaviour models such as the Social Structure and Party identification model which opposes the Rational Choice model. However, I do believe that in a country with such a profound and long-standing system of democracy that the majority of voters are rational and will put long term interests ahead of short term desperation. In the last century we have survived the electoral attempts of the fascist National Front party whom now have moved on to being a non-election competing fringe party. Even in the midst of a recession the British National Party has not, amid exaggerated media reports, made any major or significant electoral break through. Griffin might be speaking louder, he might be allowed to go on Question Time, but voters, the very vast majority of them are still subscribed to main stream politics. Therefore, I believe the Rational Voting Behaviour model has strengths outweighs weaknesses in this country, as the democratic culture is far-too longstanding for there to be any more than a very small minority of ignorant, uneducated, un-intellectual voters.