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The Price of Conscience: The Electoral Correlates and Consequences of Free Votes and Rebellions in the British House of Commons, 1987–92

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Charles Pattie ,
Edward Fieldhouse  and
R. J. Johnston
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Extract

Conventional accounts of British politics play down the electoral importance of MPs' actions in the House of Commons. Party, it is assumed, is the key feature in shaping voters' preferences: few voters are aware of how their local representative voted on a particular issue, and in any case most MPs vote along party lines. On occasion, however, MPs do vote against the party line. Where the issue involved commands considerable public interest, this may raise an individual MP's profile with his or her constituents, with consequent effects upon future electoral prospects. This article investigates the connection between MPs' votes on a series of free votes and rebellions during the 1987 Parliament and their share of the vote in the 1992 general election. Generally, Conservative MPs' actions in the Commons had no effect on their subsequent share of the popular vote. However where an issue was of marked public interest, such as capital punishment or the poll tax, how the MPs voted did exert a small but discernible effect on the support that they received in 1992.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 359 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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14 The regions were: Strathclyde; East Central Scotland; rural Scotland; the rural north of England; the industrial North East; Merseyside; Greater Manchester; the rest of the North West; West Yorkshire; South Yorkshire; rural Wales; industrial South Wales; West Midlands conurbation; rest of West Midlands; East Midlands; East Anglia; Devon and Cornwall; rest of the South West excluding Devon and Cornwall; Inner London; Outer London; Outer Metropolitan; Outer South East.

15 Analysis of variance was used in preference to ordinary least squares (OLS) regression because of the large number of categorical independent variables in the models. The ANOVA estimates all show net effects, taking into account the influence of the other independent variables. Our conclusions were not substantially altered by repeating the analyses using OLS. Details available from the authors.

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22 The ANOVA results showed that the control variables were significantly related to constituency flow of the vote in every model tested. Furthermore, close examination of the controls showed that they were related to flow in precisely the ways expected: as a result, we offer no further discussion of the control variables here (details available on request).

23 When we repeated these analyses using vote share, only the Mates amendment vote produced a result significant at the 95 per cent level. It was significantly related to the Labour share of the vote in Conservative seats: where the Tory MP supported the amendment, Labour's vote share was 1 percentage point below average, but where the MP voted against, Labour support was 0.11 percentage points above. The capital punishment vote was significantly related to the Conservative share of the vote at the 90 per cent level. Details are available from the authors.

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