Ultimately unless the parties fall into a trend whereby one is totally right wing and the other left wing it will be very hard to predict or stereotype people to a political party just because of their class or position in society.
Gender is out of the five categories, the most hard to base any conclusions from since the nineteen ninety seven elections. This is because from the statistics there is very little gender differences in party choice. Previously gender was attributed for one of the reasons for party choice; the majority of women voting in the UK in the four elections between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen ninety two voted Conservative than they did for any other party. This is slightly ironic because the Conservative party was in fact the worst represented in terms of female MP’s out of the major forerunners being Labour and The Liberal Democrats. The complete disappearance of the gender gap in two thousand and two can be matched and attributed to three main points:- The first being the Labour parties election tactics beginning in nineteen ninety seven to target and effectively win over women voters. They had the advantage of having a well represented party by female MP’s contrasting the male dominant conservative party. The second was/is due to a rapidly changing workforce. Women were now beginning to achieve high power positions such as in the government as before mentioned but also in industry, world leading companies and even in the UK’s counter intelligence arm; MI5 (Miss Manningham-Buller), the second in a decade. Also the traditional conservative attitudes of the more right wing Conservative MP’s on domestic policies had a counter productive effect on the female voting population. Labour on the other side of the fence actually attracted women with their policies on improvements in childcare, health and education (‘education, education, education’ – Mr Blair).
Age, one of the other determining factors of voting behaviour has had its fair share of theory’s, predictions and disputes. For instance it was acknowledged for a period of time that from the voting age of eighteen most teenagers would be totally against the Conservative parties ideals. But as that person grew older they would have increased tendencies to vote for that party. Evidence for this can be found in the general conservative attitude; not supporting any radical changes, wishes to stay as England and not join EU etc. It was found that more mature people were more complacent with political affairs and generally did not approve greatly of change. All of which support Conservative policy.
Many political scientists disputed this theory arguing that it was too simple and could couldn’t be attributed to the majority of the general public. Sutler & Stokes (1974) proposed that in actual fact the increase of ageing Conservative Party voters were just part of an generation of non-radicals. They said that when a person starts voting they tend to stick with their chosen party and their allegiances get stronger as they grow older. The consequence of this theory which other people pointed out is that with a majority of Labour Party young supporters adhering to radical changes in the system, in the future we are going to find a radicalised electorate.
Both theories can draw upon the same evidence being the two thousand and one election where the Conservatives only beat Labour in the number of elderly people over sixty four whom voted.
Ethnic minority origins have been, in the past quite accurate when predicting an election. This is mainly to the right wing xenophobic attitudes that are common place around the UK. Because of having the two major parties with political left and right wing views it is relatively simple to judge which the majority of ethnic minorities are going to vote for. Of course a lot more research has to go into examining the policies of each parties but on the whole Conservatives tend to be anti-immigrant whereas the Labour party has relatively mixed views generally for immigrants. Labour has been under increasing pressure in the last two years to put more stricter measures on potential immigrant’s and a crack down on illegal immigrants. The government has been caught in the middle of needing more young families with an ever increasingly ageing work force and pressure to crack down on immigrants with the perception that their draining social security. They have handled it relatively well being that they re beating the conservatives by nine to one and the Liberals by fifteen to one according to the two thousand and one elections. Generally, political scientists can best base their predictions on ethnic minorities reasonably accurately.
Another example was in the much disputed Bush versus Gore US presidential elections, George Bush targeted both the minority groups (ethnicity) and younger adult citizens (age). He achieved this by first using the media much more effectively than his rival by only being in front of a camera if it was relatively scripted in effect not being asked awkward questions. He then demolished Al Gore’s image by labelling him ‘Al Bore Gore’.
In conclusion to the question why has voting behaviour become increasingly more difficult to predict. It is always difficult to predict an elections for so many reasons as outlined above. As time has passed up to present day the job of an political scientist has become less accurate. They can only really speculate what is going to happen in a modern day election because of the increased amount of theories and general change in public perceived important matters. I also cannot see in the future the job becoming any easier unless there is a massive reform and change to the electorate system or a collapse/radical change in one of the major parties.
