Class, Social Mobility, and Voting: Evidence from Historical Voting Records

Torun Dewan, Christopher Kam, Jaakko Meriläinen (jaakko.merilainen@hhs.se) and Janne Tukiainen
Additional contact information
Torun Dewan: Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom.
Christopher Kam: Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver Campus C425 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z1

No 142, Discussion Papers from Aboa Centre for Economics

Abstract: We explore the connection between social class, social mobility, and voting behavior in nineteenth-century England. To avoid pitfalls associated with survey or aggregate data on voting behavior, we use administrative longitudinal records preceding secret ballot on voters’ choices and occupation. These data reveal that the landed gentry, farm workers, non-skilled workers and white-collar workers voted, on average, more for the Conservatives, and petty bourgeoisie and skilled workers for the Liberals. The changes in voting behavior within individuals due to social mobility are immediate and mainly consistent with the same cleavage. Our interpretation is that voting was influenced by economic incentives.

Keywords: Class-based voting; economic voting; social mobility; voting behavior; poll books (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N33 N93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-lma and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ace-economics.fi/kuvat/dp142.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tkk:dpaper:dp142

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Aboa Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Susmita Baulia (susmita.baulia@utu.fi).