The strength of party identification among the British electorate: An exploration

Party identification is often presented as a more stable aspect of voters' self-images than other components, and as such it has been promoted as a valid concept for study of voting behaviour. Analysis of data from the first two waves of a large British longitudinal study shows that only a minority of the adults interviewed consistently identified with one of the country's main political parties and that of that minority only a bare majority reported the same strength of identification at both interviews. Analyses of differences between respondents according to both the strength of their identification and changes in that strength find no relationships with socio-demographic characteristics, but strong links to economic, social and political attitudes. Further research is called for into the interactions among attitudes, parties identification and changing strength of party identification.