People, Places and Regions: Exploring the Use of Multi-Level Modelling in the Analysis of Electoral Data

There has been considerable recent debate about the importance of local context as an influence on political attitudes and voting behaviour in Great Britain. Resolution of that debate has been difficult, because analytical methods have not been available with which to evaluate the relative importance of both individual voter characteristics and the characteristics of their milieux as independent correlates of attitudes and behaviour. The technique of multi-level modelling has been developed by educational researchers to do just that. It is introduced here and illustrated using data for the 1987 British general election. The preliminary results suggest that place clearly does matter as a component of the processes that influence voters’ choices.