Short term factors affecting voting behaviour

• What acronym can be used to remember the short term factors?

  CLIP
• What does the C in CLIP stand for?


  Campaign
• What does the L in CLIP stand for?

  Leadership
• What does the I in CLIP stand for?


  Issues
• What does the P in CLIP stand for?

  Policies
• What is the rational choice theory?

  Voting based on self-interest and rationality. Consider how they will be affected by having different parties in government
• What is valence?


  The idea that people support the party best able to deliver on issues they care about
• Valence suggests voters aren’t solely concerned with policies but also how much they trust the party to deliver them
• Valence can be summed up in 3 questions:

  1. Which party do I trust the most
  2. Which party do I trust to handle the economy
  3. Which party will/has been competent in government
• Labour defeats in 2010 and 2015 elections were partly based on economic voting (poor handling of 2008 financial crash)
• Voters like leaders with desirable personal characteristics
• Voters will look at the leader’s past records as politicians
• Which leader was perceived as weak in the 2015 election?


  Ed Miliband
• Which leader was punished by the electorate for being seen as indecisive in 2010?


  Gordon Brown
• Issue voting suggests that voters will decide whom to vote for based on a single issue that means a great deal to them.
• Issue voting is usually seen as irrational in the sense that someone may vote for a party based on this one issue, even though it might lead to them being worse off in many other ways.
• What is a manifesto?


  A list of policies a party sets out to try to appeal to voters and persuade them to vote for it.
• The role of the party leader and how a changing reputation can impact on a party’s fortunes can be seen by comparing the performances of Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 and 2019.
• There is little doubt that Corbyn’s resurgence was a major influence on the outcome of the 2017 election and the Labour revival
• A typical example of tactical voting could be Labour supporters voting Conservative to keep out a UKIP candidate in a close UKIP Conservative contest.