This book provides an accessible and indispensable introduction to British general election, the results, the voting patterns and the implications for our understanding of British politics.

How do voters in Britain decide which party to vote for in elections? Have age and education replaced class as the social basis for voting? Are elections now ‘presidentialised’, with voters simply choosing between party leaders? What role do the media, new and old, play in all of this? The authors examine these and other questions in the fourth edition of this popular text. The core of the text is devoted to examining and explaining theories of party choice, including the debate about whether voters are driven more by issues and ideology or simply by which party and leader looks least likely to make a mess of things in office. The authors also devote separate chapters to turnout trends and patterns, the media, electoral systems, the geography of party support, and – new to this edition – referendums. Fully revised and with detailed analysis of the 2019 election and the electoral fallout of Brexit, the text incorporates the latest research on elections and voting behaviour, and includes analysis of recent trends and developments – such as the effect of digital media on electoral politics and where recent misfires leave the opinion polls.

This is a lively and authoritative account by a leading political journalist and former MP of how the British electoral system works. It is addressed primarily to intelligent voters, but also to students of political science, government and British Constitution at universities, colleges and schools. It answers central questions such as: When are elections held? Who can vote? What happens on polling day? And how does one become an MP? It explains clearly how and why constituency boundaries have to be altered, how the parties are organized, how campaigns are conducted, the role of the media, how reliable opinion polls are and what happens at by-elections. This completely revised and up-dated edition deals also with local elections, referenda and elections to the European Parliament and describes clearly the main features of other electoral systems, including the main variations of proportional representation. The annexes contain a mass of electoral statistics and a thorough bibliography.

This title is a revised and extended replacement for the same author's text on Elections and Voting Behaviour in Britain in the same series. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of electoral politics today and of its evolution in the post war period. Two entirely new chapters focus on electoral reform and on the main theoretical approaches to the study of elections and voting.

This volume incorporates material from the 2005 general election and discusses the electoral research. It provides an account of the development of electoral politics in Britain over the post war period, using the British Election Study (BES) survey data.

British politics has been revolutionized in the past ten years by two major factors: the hegemony of Thatcherism for eighteen years; and the current dominance of what some say is variant-Blairism--forged in opposition and enthroned in government since May 1997. This volume addresses key political issues which occupy the government and opposition, including: Blair's style of government, the philosophy of the welfare state and the question of its reform, policy-making in the oppressed local government sector, law and order, reform of the voting system, the effect of EU membership on British politics, the much criticized monarchy, privatization, the environment, education, standards in public life, the politics of the health service, and the usefulness of the House of Lords.