Talk as a political context: conversation and electoral change in British elections, 1992-1997

Voters' social networks are largely ignored as an aspect of their contextua l milieux. Despite long-standing theoretical evocations of the conversation -conversion model in accounts of the neighbourhood effect, few analyses hav e considered the impact of actual conversations. The lacuna is addressed in this paper using panel survey data to look at vote and attitude change bet ween the 1992 and 1997 British General Elections. Voters' contexts, as meas ured by their conversational milieux, were independent influences on both v ote and attitude change over the period. Other things being equal, talking to a supporter of a particular party increased a respondent's chances of vo ting for that party (and decreased the chance of voting for its rivals), an d of shifting his or her attitudes in the direction associated with the par ty. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.