Voting Behaviour And The Media- Non-social Factors And Voting Behaviour, Party Leadership

Question 1

What tends to happen if party leaders are unpopular ?

Answer 1

Leaders who are unpopular tend to drag down a party’s share of the vote, while popular leaders usually help their party’s fortunes at the ballot box.

Question 2

Leadership does affect the electoral outcome

Answer 2

Tony Blair

Jeremy Corbyn

Question 3

Leadership does not affect the electoral outcome

Answer 3

Clement Attlee

Margaret Thatcher

Question 4

Leadership does affect the electoral outcome:

Tony Blair

Answer 4

The Labour Party leader’s high approval ratings propelled Labour to big election wins in 1997 and 2001, but Blair’s waning popularity after the Iraq War correlates to Labour’s reduced majority after the 2005 general election.

Question 5

Leadership does affect the electoral outcome:

Jeremy Corbyn

Answer 5

A 2019 survey of former Labour voters found that 43% of respondents cast their vote on the basis of ‘leadership’, perhaps highlighting how dislike of Corbyn helped shatter the so-called ‘red wall’, former Labour-held safe seats that were won by the Conservatives.

Question 6

Leadership does not affect the electoral outcome:

Clement Attlee

Answer 6

The Conservative Party leader and wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, said of Attlee that he was
‘a modest little man with much to be modest about’. Yet Labour under Attlee won a landslide victory in 1945.

Question 7

Leadership does not affect the electoral outcome:

Margaret Thatcher

Answer 7

Labour’s James Callaghan had higher net approval ratings than Margaret Thatcher in 1979, but her Conservative Party still won back power.