THE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT VOTE

Accounting for the success of the Liberal Democrat: party in recent lo cal elections held in Britain has proved difficult. Traditionally, the electoral system has operated to disadvantage third parties bur the L iberal Democrats appear successfully to have surmounted that obstacle to winning representation. Ths paper introduces the reader to issues o f contemporary British electoral geography and analyses a number of fa ctors, socio-economic, political and spatial, in terms of their contri bution towards a better understanding of Liberal Democrat successes at the local government level. Compared with the vote for both the Conse rvative and Labour parties, that for the Liberal Democrats is not easi ly explained using ward level socio-economic census data. Additionally , models of uniform swing are not effective in projecting likely Liber al Democrat seat gains with the party consistently doing better than f orecasted. The final part of the analysis, therefore, looks for any sp atial patterns in the development and spread of the Liberal Democrat v ote. The evidence suggests that Liberal Democrat. victories are most l ikely to occur in areas neighbouring wards which the party has already won. This leads us to conjecture that there is some element of a spat ial contagion effect to the Liberal Democrat vote which stems from the party's campaigning style in local elections. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.