Local economic contexts and changing party allegiances at the 1992 British general election

Controversy has surrounded the explanation of one of the most striking features of recent British General Elections: the rapidly changing regional geography of the vote. While some analysts have seen this as evidence of the impact of local electoral contexts on voting decisions, others have claimed that apparent regional effects are merely a consequence of poorly specified models. In this paper, new data from the 1992 British Election Study are employed to demonstrate the independent impact of regional economic context upon the vote-switching behaviour of individual British electors between the 1987 and 1992 General Elections.