Class dealignment and the neighbourhood effect: Miller revisited

The concept of a neighbourhood effect within British voting patterns has la rgely been discarded, because no data have been available for testing it at the appropriate spatial scales. To undertake such tests, bespoke neighbour hoods have been created around the home of each respondent to the 1997 Brit ish Election Study survey in England and Wales, and small-area census data have been assembled for these to depict the socio-economic characteristics of voters' local contexts. Analyses of voting in these small areas, divided into five equal-sized status areas, provides very strong evidence that mem bers of each social class were much more likely to vote Labour than Conserv ative in the low-status than in the high-status areas. This is entirely con sistent with the concept of the neighbourhood effect, but alternative expla nations are feasible. The data provide very strong evidence of micro-geogra phical variations in voting patterns. for which further research is necessa ry to identify the processes involved.