What I Have Learnt in A-Level Politics & Government?

Recently, Rizwan eagerly delved into a fascinating new topic in A-level Politics: voting behaviour. With a keen interest in understanding the intricacies of democratic processes, Rizwan embarked on a journey to explore the factors that influence individuals’ voting decisions.

Voting behaviour is the way that different people tend to vote. It is studied so that political scientists, or more accurately political psychologists, can understand why certain people vote for different political parties and so that political parties can predict who might vote for them in the future, which helps them to plan the policies, communication and the people who might best represent them and persuade voters to vote for them at the next election.

The study of voting behaviour can be roughly divided into long-term and short-term influences. Long-term influences include social class, gender, race, culture, religion, age, education, housing tenure and simple long-term political alignment (when people just say “I’m Labour” for instance). Short-term influences include the performance/ competency of the governing party, major issues, the electoral campaign, the image of party leaders, the influence of the mass media and major political events (e.g. war or economic crises).

Class alignment is the commitment of a particular social class to a political party, meaning that they will vote for that party come-whatmay. Class alignment has fallen in recent decades, although there is still evidence that some exists.

Class dealignment refers to a phenomenon in which traditional patterns of voting behaviour based on social class affiliation weaken or break down. In other words, it describes a decline in the tendency of voters to consistently support a particular political party based solely on their social class background.

Social class is a measure of a person’s status or position within society. Social class usually takes account of an individual’s income, wealth, occupation, education, etc, although different classifications use different criteria.

In the past society was classified as follows:
Social Class A – senior professional
Social Class B – lower professional
Social Class C1 – skilled
Social Class C2 – semi-skilled.