PATTERNS OF VOTING CHOICE IN MULTIMEMBER DISTRICTS - THE CASE OF ENGLISH LOCAL ELECTIONS

Analysis of plurality voting where district magnitude is greater than one offers students of electoral behaviour unique opportunities. In th is paper we use aggregate voting data from English local elections to explore a number of issues concerning the relationship between parties , candidates and voters. Our first task is to measure the level of unu sed votes and consider the impact of party competition and electoral m arginality. Multimember districts also provide the potential for intra -party comparisons of candidates. Accordingly, we measure the range of votes between candidates from the same party and consider the impact of incumbency, gender and ballot position on differential rates of ele ctoral support. Although the empirical focus of the paper is on Englis h local government, its findings may well prove relevant to an underst anding of the relationship between voters and parties in other elector al systems where a choice about the number of votes to use and the way in which to cast them is available. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.