What Factors Influence Uk Voting Behaviour Politics Essay

What Factors Influence Uk Voting Behaviour Politics Essay Voting behavior is the Psychological way of saying how people decide to vote in elections. Although voting is an individual act, it does not take place in isolation. Votes are influenced by a host of factors. These factors can be put in to two main groups. There are sociological factors which is called long-term factors looking at how people vote. Also political factors which is called short-term factors which focuses on the way people vote in general elections. psephologists have discovered various of theories to explain the factors that influence voting behavior in general elections. There are evidence which shows fewer people identify with a stronger party compare to 40 years ago. Elections are becoming more volatile. The 1997 General Election was apolitical Earthquake, which swigged of over 10 percent from Conservative to Labour. Long-term factors Class de-alignment plays a significant importance in voting behavior. Class de-alignment have long been the most significant influence on voting behavior in Britain. Historically, Labour always been a working-class party and Conservative was richer and middle-class party. A weakening relationship between social class and party support has been evident for some years now.   The evidence supporting the class de-alignment thesis may be seen in the fall of the majority voting for their natural class. In their classic study Butler and Stokes (1974) showed that between 1945-1970 Conservative regularly gained four-fifth of middle-class vote and Labour three-fifth of working-class vote. After 1970s these margins fell to Conservative three- fifth and Labour one-half. Less than half of the people voted with their party-class compare to second period. Political scientists such as (Crew 1977) have argued that the link between occupational class and party preference at election times has dimini shed. It is also linked to changes in social class itself. People are now less easily identifiable in class terms. According to Heath (1985) there was no evidence that there had been a fall in working-class loyalty to the Labour party. Rather, the overall decline in the Labour vote reflected a reduction of the size of the working-class as a whole. However, Curtice (1997) rejected Heaths study and claimed that survey indicates that increase in Labours support were fairly evenly spread across the different classes. He stated the rise in Labours support compared with 1992 was more or less the same in each social grade. The differences between the social grades were largely the same in 1997 as in 1992. Rather than being accompanied by the emergence of some long-lost relationship between class and vote, Labours 1997 victory appears to have done little to disturb the relationship between class and vote. Ethnicity is seen as a factor in voting behavior.   This is largely because ethnic minorities account for only 5% of votes.   However, even among the Blacks and Asians in the U.Ks, there is an emerging pattern. The 1997 election demonstrated that 70% of Asians and 86% of Blacks voted for Labour compared to the 25% of Asians and 85% of Blacks who voted for the Conservatives. A reason behind this could be that a large number of ethnic minorities are in low paid jobs which back the reasons to why their needs would suit Labours political policies. With regard to age differences in voting, Labour has done particularly well among voters the age of 30, 28 percent lead over the Conservatives in 1945 and 16 percent lead in 1974. Whereas, Conservatives has done well among the middle age (50-65) leading 18 percent in 1950 and 23 percent in 1974. It has been traditionally argued that women were more likely than men to vote Conservative and less likely than men to vote Labour. Party identification or (partisan alignment) party identification is clearly linked with some of the long-term factors connected with voting behavior. People in particular social class will be aligned to the political party which they identify as being the one which has the interests of their class at heart. In recent decades we have seen clear evidence of partisan de-alignments this means that fewer voters are strongly attached to a political party the emotional bond of loyalty between voter and their party is in decline implying that the electorate is becoming more volatile in its voting behaviour and more likely to adopt a judgemental approach before casting a vote. Short-term factors Issues and values it seems altogether that voters should look at issues and values of the political parties they are voting for. Over the last 15 years political issues has clearly grown.   For example, in 1992 the Conservatives were seen to be the strongest party due to their involvement in defense, taxation, prices and inflation issues, ultimately this shows why they won the election.   However, it is evident that in 1997 Labour maintained the highest success rate because their policies were based on the NHS, unemployment, education, taxation and relations with Europe which resulted in Labour gaining power.   Therefore, the evidence suggest that there is a significant link between party policies and voting behavior. Party leader one thing which will influence voters when it comes to vote is the personality of the person who stands for election. There are two aspects of this, first, the personality of the party leader may count as one of the policy issues on which the consumer-voter bases his/her vote at a general elections. People want their country run by someone who is honest, reliable, clever, eloquent, strong and also good at talking to others. Wilson remained more popular than Heath in 1970, but still lost. Callaghan was preferred to Thatcher as prime minister by the margin of 44 percent to 33 percent in 1979, but it was the Conservatives led by Thatcher that decisively won the election. In 1992 Major was perceived to be better than Kinnock and won, while in 1997 Major was perceived to as worse than Blair and lost. This is the evidence to say that this factor in voting behaviour has grown in recent years with the increased media focus on party leaders and the growth of presidentialism. (Lea ch 2006). Party image an image may in some ways be very close to old-fashioned ideology, repackaged for the modern world. The image will consist of a sense of what the party stand for, or which principle lie behind what it aims to achieve in power. Labour was successful under Tony Blair in putting across a clear image. It became New Labour modern and young. It was sober and sensible in economic terms, but also caring and compassionate on the social front. In 1997 and 2001 Conservatives could not shake off a negative image, old fashioned, faintly bigoted, sleazy and obsessive. In 2005 Conservatives were beginning to change their image partly because Labour was developing some of these traits itself. (Holmes 2008)

Alfred Nobel Essay example -- essays research papers

Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1833.(Encarta) His father Immanuel Nobel was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. In connection with his construction work Immanuel Nobel also experimented with different techniques of blasting rock. Alfred's mother, Andrietta Ahlsell came from a wealthy family. Due to misfortunes in the construction work caused by the loss of some barges of building material, Immanuel Nobel was forced into bankruptcy the same year Alfred Nobel was born. In 1837, Immanuel Nobel left Stockholm and his family to start a new career in Finland and in Russia. To support the family, Andrietta Nobel started a grocery store which provided a modest income. Meanwhile Immanuel Nobel was successful in his new enterprise in St. Petersburg, Russia. He started a mechanical workshop which provided equipment for the Russian army and he also convinced the Tsar and his generals that naval mines could be used to block enemy naval ships from threatening the city. The naval mines designed by Immanuel Nobel were simple devices consisting of submerged wooden casks filled with gun powder. Anchored below the surface of the Gulf of Finland they effectively deterred the British Royal Navy from moving into firing range of St. Petersburg during the Crimean war (1853-1856). Immanuel Nobel was also a pioneer in arms manufacture and in designing steam engines. Successful in his industrial and business ventures, Immanuel Nobel was able, in 1842, to bring his family to St. Petersburg. There, his sons were given a first class education by private teachers. The training included natural sciences, languages and literature. By the age of 17, Alfred Nobel was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German. His primary interests were in English literature and poetry as well as in chemistry and physics. Alfred's father, who wanted his sons to join his enterprise as engineers, disliked Alfred's interest in poetry and found his son rather introverted. In order to widen Alfred's horizons his father sent him abroad for further training in chemical engineering. During a two year period, Alfred Nobel visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States.(Schuck p. 113) In Paris, the city he came to like best, he worked in the private laboratory of Professor T.J. Pelouze, a famous chemist. There he met the y... ...e Bjà ¶rkborn Manor became his Swedish home. Alfred Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896. When his will was opened it came as a surprise that his fortune was to be used for Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The executors of his will were two young engineers, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist. They set about forming the Nobel Foundation as an organization to take care of the financial assets left by Nobel for this purpose and to coordinate the work of the Prize-Awarding Institutions. This was not without its difficulties since the will was contested by relatives and questioned by authorities in various countries. But as we all know, the legacy of Alfred Nobel lives on today. The prizes named after him are still the most coveted prizes for the recipients in their respective fields. Everyone will remember Alfred Nobel as a daring pioneer who knew no limits. Many of the new advanced scientific discoveries made in the last century were surely helped out by the work of Nobel. His Nobel prizes reward people of science and enable them to keep churning out new ways of accomplishing new feats that have never been attempted before

Really Trying to Mean

It is no accident that the best writers tend to be amongst the most voracious and most thoughtful of readers. To be called into meaningful existence a text cannot stand by itself; that is, it cannot live outside of culture. When we say that a particular text means something, we are incorporating our own ideas as readers into what we think the author meant, ultimately producing another version of what the text really means. This is a significant delineation that brings forth the notion of reading, writing, and interpretation in the realm of discourse. Worlds collide in the act of interiorizing alphabetic literacy. Truth and meaning become contingent upon the heterogeneity of thought that is necessary to determine how a text relates to the reality of the reader. In Ong’s words, â€Å"The text has no meaning until someone reads it, and to make sense it must be interpreted, which is to say related to the reader’s world. † Following this lead we can say that we create meaning but we are not the original creator because the reading from which we base our conceptions has been in existence since before Socrates himself. To build from this past, Jaspers locates the reality and the implications of historical thought when he writes, â€Å"It is impossible not to form an image of the historic Socrates. What is more, some image of Socrates is indispensable to our philosophical thinking. † We have an indispensable point of reference to discourse in the image of Socrates in our reading of Socrates so that ‘today no philosophical thought is possible unless Socrates is present, if only as a pale shadow. † The import of this type of reading, a reading with a historical point of reference to the current reality, is in the veins of Western thought going back to Socrates while at the making Socrates present in today’s dialogue, if only as a pale shadow. Jaspers and Ong are alluding to the notion of a certain kind of synthesis, as Taylor will help to flesh out. Taylor questions what this all ultimately means to philosophy and to our lives, â€Å"What is the real significance of Socrates in the history of [Western] thought? [Simply put, he] created the intellectual and moral tradition by which [Western civilization] has ever since lived. The role of Socrates is, as Ong and Jaspers also believe, is a never ending presence in the paradigm of Western civilization. Socrates is therefore still very much alive in philosophy today. His image alone represents the ongoing debates taking place at conferences, in mid-terms, and in the public dialogue. The reality of his death defies the fact t hat he maintains a presence today. Speaking of letters and reading between the lines of history will allow us to create another reality than the one of alarm clocks, lunch breaks, and taxes – a debate that resonates all the way back to before Socrates drank the hemlock.

A Review On Strategic Processes - 1302 Words

Of the numerous decisions consummated during a lifetime, a handful will stand apart in rather dramatic fashion compared to more routine activities emblematic of everyday life. These outliers distinguish themselves with the hallmark of long-term repercussions emanating from miscalculation or misunderstood risk which routinely produces an assortment of financial peril. Such exceedingly prodigious decisions primarily categorize as strategic with their formulation amalgamations of art, science and a smattering of other intangible elements. Undoubtedly, they ought to warrant extraordinary care and thorough investigation going forward, including possible exit strategies. However, time and again, the human equation proves otherwise and omits that which seems so indispensable in the inexorable drive for an expeditious remedy. And although strategic decisions customarily associate with organizational entities such as the Department of Defense, the Fortune 500 and major research institutions, it would be erroneous to believe in the existence of some mutual exclusivity. In the chapters that follow, the writer presents a review of strategic processes promoting applicability to individuals while focusing on those rarefied decisions with illustrative examples demonstrating conceptual parallels with complex organizations they ordinarily associate. Anything but clear-cut and definitive, these cardinal judgments represent the epitome of obscurity, ambiguity and vagueness by long-termShow MoreRelatedThe Company’S Board Of Directors Plays A Determinative1392 Words   |  6 Pagesapplication of the principles of the internal control. The GE Board includes the Audit Committee, Governance Public Affairs Committee, Management Development Compensation Committee, Science Technology Committee, and Risk Committee. 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