THE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT VOTE

Accounting for the success of the Liberal Democrat party in recent loc al elections herd in Britain has proved difficult. Traditionally the e lectoral system has operated to disadvantage third parties but the Lib eral Democrats. appear successfully to have surmounted that obstacle t o winning representation. Ths paper introduces the reader to issues of contemporary British electoral geography and analyses a number of fac tors, socio-economic, political and spatial, in terms of their contrib ution towards a better understanding of Liberal Democrat successes at the local government level. Compared with the vote for both the Conser vative and Labour parties, that for the Liberal Democrats is not easil y explained using ward level socio-economic census data. Additionally, models of uniform swing are nor effective in projecting likely Libera l Democrat seat gains with the party consistently doing better than fo recasted. The final part of the analysis, therefore, looks for any spa tial patterns in the development and spread of the Liberal Democrat vo te. The evidence suggests that Liberal Democrat victories are most lik ely to occur in areas neighbouring wards which the party has already w on. This leads us to conjecture that there is some element of a spatia l contagion effect to the Liberal Democrat vote which stems from the p arty's campaigning style in local elections. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.