The traditional explanation

An essential element of the British political party model of government is that parties aim to win office by competing for the vote of the electorate on the basis of a programme of policies. It is was then argued that individual voters are rational and informed, they have an appreciation of their own best interests and so vote accordingly.

The electorate has not matched this model of an active and informed public involvement in politics. Studies revealed just how limited the information that voters had concerning the policy position of the parties was, and that they often supported a party in spite of its policies, instead of because of them (Dearlove and Saunders, 1984).

In a landmark text - Political Change in Britain, Butler & Stokes (1963), challenged the idea of an informed electorate. They argued that the behaviour of the electorate is shaped less by particular issues than it was by generalised attitudes and beliefs about party image.

It is this idea of a party image that was taken by most commentators of the time as evidence that Britain, at least until the late 1970s, was the purist example of class voting in any Western industrial democracy.

Pulzer (1967), claimed:

'Class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail.'

Traditionally then, political sociologists have identified social class as the most important factor associated with voting behaviour. This is hardly surprising given that one of the major political parties - Labour - was founded upon a commitment to a class, and whose origins lie in the organised trade union movement.

The sociological model of voting behaviour, associated with Butler and Stokes, was based on the consistent finding that social class was the most accurate indicator of likely voting intention. In general, working class voters did vote for the Labour Party, and middle class voters voted Conservative. Usually, about two-thirds of the working class voted Labour, while four-fifths of the middle class voted Conservative.

In the period 1946-70, it was assumed that stable two party voting was the norm. During this period, Marsh, Developments in Sociology, argued that the following situation prevailed:

Two party dominance. The overwhelming majority of the electorate voted Conservative or Labour.

Thus the sociological model of voting behaviour, put forward by Butler and Stokes (1963), started with what was seen as the major social cleavage in British society - social class:

Social cleavage (especially social class) indicated.
The type of political socialisation in a family, which lead to.
Party identification, leading to.
Political attitudes and voting intentions.

Most analysts, while still supported to some extent, by sociologists who argue for the continuing importance of social class as the main indicator of likely voting intention, have largely abandoned this model. Put simply, the reason that the model was abandoned was that it was losing its predictive value.

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A note detailing a lot of points about A-Level Sociology, specifically focused on Voting. Credit to: www.s-cool.co.uk/