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Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on October 9, 2007
Journal of Economic Geography 2008 8(1):105-126; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbm032
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Positional issues, valence issues and the economic geography of voting in British elections

Charles Pattie* and Ron Johnston**

*Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. email < c.pattie{at}sheffield.ac.uk>
**School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK. email < r.johnston{at}bristol.ac.uk>

JEL classifications: D72 (models of political processes: rent-seeking, elections, legislatures and voting behaviour)

A body of research has built up in recent years linking the changing geography of party support in British elections to variations in the country's economic geography. Consistent with the economic vote model, government support has been shown to be higher than average in affluent areas and lower than average in poorer areas. However, the great majority of such studies have concentrated on elections between 1979 and 1997, a prolonged period of one-party rule. This article argues that this means existing research cannot differentiate between the very different predictions of positional and valence approaches to economic voting since both suggest identical outcomes during Conservative administrations. By contrasting a period of Conservative rule with a period of Labour rule, however, the article provides a test of the competing claims of the positional and valence arguments for an understanding of Britain's electoral geography.

Keywords: economic voting, valence politics, electoral geography
Date submitted: 13 July 2006     Date accepted: 26 July 2007


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