Embellishment and detail? The changing relationship between voting, class, attitudes and the core-periphery division of Great Britain 1979-1987

Traditional models of electoral behaviour in Great Britain have stressed the importance of class as a determinant of the vote. More recently, analysts have suggested that class has declined in importance, and that its place has been taken by evaluative voting and by regional cleavages. The paper assesses these views of electoral behaviour for the 1979, 1983 and 1987 British general elections. Log-linear path analysis models are fitted to survey data for several different model specifications, and the results are assessed. All the factors considered have significant, independent relations with voting, even when their own interactions are taken into account. -Authors