As set out in Chapter 1, the vast majority of the survey data that we analyse in this book come from questions included in waves 2, 3, 5 and 6 of the British Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (B/CCAP). B/CCAP was a panel study based on a sample of approximately 10,000 respondents; individual teams of researchers could ‘hire’ sections of this sample and ask them questions at various points in time. Our participation in B/CCAP was funded by the British Academy (grant No. SG-52322) and the Economic and Social Research Council (grant No. RES-000-22-3459). All the B/CCAP surveys were conducted online by the YouGov opinion polling organisation. Wave 2, ‘spring 2009’, was completed between 21 April and 6 May; wave 3, ‘autumn 2009’, was completed between 23 and 28 September; wave 5, ‘spring 2010’, was completed between 23 April and 4 May; and wave 6, the post-election survey, was completed between 15 and 30 June 2010. Our initial panel comprised 1,388 adult respondents from across Britain; this represented a response rate of 70.17 per cent of YouGov’s pre-selected sample. YouGov provided weighting variables for each wave reflecting the demographic characteristics of the entire adult population. Data concerning candidates’ and MPs’ attitudes, which we describe in Chapter 4, come from the 2005 British Representation Study. See Nicholas Allen and Sarah Birch (2012) for further details.

The variables that appear below appear in at least one of our figures or tables. Other questions to which we refer in prose only are described in full in the text or in footnotes.