Conference of the British Sociological Association, 1955. I Voting Behaviour and its Study in Britain.

The article focuses on a study of the mass voting behavior in Great Britain, discussed at the Conference of the British Sociological Association in 1955. The starting point of any study of mass voting behavior must be the discovery of who votes for which party. It was plain from the constituencies that were Liberal and Conservative strongholds that there was a connection between economic geography and political allegiance. An example of the correlation between party allegiance and social characteristics is the influence of Catholicism on voting. Majority of Catholics appear to vote Labor. Catholics are to a disproportionate extent found in the lower income groups, a majority of which vote Labor. Their social class seems an important determinant of their vote than their religious affiliation. It would be interesting to know about party supporters in terms of their acquaintance with public events, in terms of their estimates of the consequences of victory or defeat for their side, in terms of the intensity of their partisanship, and in terms of their views on the range of social, political and economic problems with which the government has to cope. All study of voting behavior is handicapped by the fact that, for most people, voting in a particular election is the continuation of a habit, not the expression of a newly made decision.