Voting Behaviour - The 2010 General Election

Background:

• Gordon Brown could have called a Snap Election in 2007 when he became PM after Blair stepped down and he would have won but however, he didn’t call an election and a year later there was a worldwide recession happened and he got the blame for the UK’s fault in it.

Key Issues Surrounding The Campaign:

• How damaging the recession would be to the Labour Party
• Did Cameron do enough to detoxify the party
• The first UK election TV debate
• What role would UKIP and other minor parties do

Key Policies:

• Conservatives focused on saving the NHS and the need to see the economy through better management and savings
• Labour focused on Brown’s economic management and action going against the economic collapse
• Lib Dems focused on a compromise between the two parties

The Campaign:

• First TV debate in the history of UK general elections makes Clegg’s rise as he became popular when he kept on looking into the camera.
• The media created a three-party responding as three parties became popular
• Elements such as early morning conferences to allow news outlets to have the latest news in the mornings were abandoned by parties
• The financial crisis meant that little policies were actually created and all policies that were made was on how each party was going to make the economy better
• The media mainly support the Conservative party
• Conservative spent a lot of money on campaigning but Labour didn’t since they spent a lot in 2005 so they relied on activists to the campaign.
• The Campaign was seen for perhaps the first time through social media as in real time were commenting on Twitter during TV debates etc.

Party	Seats	Win/Loss	Share of Vote%
Conservatives	307	+109	36.19%
Labour	258	-98	29.0%
Liberal Democrats	57	+57	23.0%
Plaid Cymru	3	+1	0.4%
SNP	6	0	1.7%
Other	19	-3	9.6%

• This election meant it is now difficult not have TV debates – means elections are now more presidential
• Conservatives support fell by 2-3% which wasn’t enough for a majority
• Nick Clegg was seen as a good deputy prime minister and a peacetime coalition was put into place.

Geography	Labour gained votes in Scotland but lost in England and Wales. Conservatives gained votes in the South of England where they had mainly lost them in 1997
Class	Conservatives saw a strong swing from the C1 and C2 Labour gained a 10% swing from the DE
Gender	Men had a slight preference to the Conservative party Women preferred the Labour party and the Lib Dems
Age	Labour won the 18-24 whereas the Conservative party won everything else
Race	Conservatives won the white vote, Labour support with the BME was 68%. Lib Dem was almost equal to 20% white and 24% with BME