THE STRENGTH OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION AMONG THE BRITISH ELECTORATE - AN EXPLORATION

Party identification is often presented as a more stable aspect of vot ers' self-images than other components, and as such it has been promot ed as a valid concept for study of voting behaviour. Analysis of data from the first two waves of a large British longitudinal study shows t hat only a minority of the adults interviewed consistently identified with one of the country's main political parties and that of that mino rity only a bare majority reported the same strength of identification at both interviews. Analyses of differences between respondents accor ding to both the strength of their identification and changes in that strength find no relationships with socio-demographic characteristics, but strong links to economic, social and political attitudes. Further research is called for into the interactions among attitudes, parties identification and changing strength of party identification. Copyrig ht (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd