Travel tips for students of electoral choice: The dynamics of partisanship in Britain and elsewhere

For more than half a century, party identification has been one of the most important concepts in studies of electoral choice. The concept has been the subject of an enormous amount of research, but protracted, unresolved, controversies remain. One of the most theoretically important of these debates concerns the extent to which voters’ partisan orientations manifest individual- and aggregate-level instability. In this chapter, we discuss the origin of the concept of party identification and ensuing controversies concerning the stability of voters’ partisan attachments. Next, we use data from the British Election Studies and other sources to investigate the dynamics of partisanship in Great Britain. Then, data from panel surveys conducted in Canada, Germany and the United States are employed to place the British findings in comparative perspective. The conclusion reprises major findings and briefly discusses their implications for future research.