SOCIAL TRENDS AND ELECTORAL BEHAVIOUR.

For the great majority of British citizens electoral behavior consists almost entirely of voting for a party candidate or not voting at all at a Parliamentary General Election, and it is with this form of behavior that this study is mainly concerned. Official statistics show the total turnout for all contested constituencies, but for anything more revealing than this one is dependent upon the findings of sample surveys. From these, however, the turnout rate for various sections of the electorate is established with a fair degree of reliability. It is seen that within the total figures there are considerable and politically important variations. Both political parties have been slow to see and to accept these changes, although one party has been much slower than the other. Their procrastination has been encouraged by the fact that voting behavior, based as it is largely on early socialization and a sense of duty, has not, so far, been affected sharply by changing political attitudes. However, the gap between political attitudes and voting behavior is steadily hardening and even politicians are coming to realize that complex changes in the class structure of post-war British society threatens in the not too distant future to end the old ideological simplifications about politics.