The Issue Agenda and Voting in 2005

THE 2005 British general election was a competitive contest. In the preceding 2001 election, Labour had held ‘all of the cards’. Presiding over a robust economy, it had the most party identifiers, the most popular leader, and it was judged best on issues deemed important by many voters. Four years later, Labour had been dealt a new, very different hand—Tony Blair’s approval ratings had plummeted in the wake of the Iraq war, the number of Labour partisans had fallen substantially, and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were poised to challenge Labour on issues that many people thought had been mishandled or neglected. In the event, Labour did secure a third consecutive victory, but a significant loss of votes and seats gave the party faithful little cause for celebration. In this chapter, we investigate how issues affected electoral choice in 2005. Although issues are at the centre of general election campaigns, there is longstanding disagreement about how they influence voting. Academics, journalists and assorted political pundits frequently adopt a particular view of how issues work. Parties are seen as staking out ‘for’ and ‘against’ positions on issues such as Britain’s adoption of the Euro, the invasion of Iraq or the trade-off between tax relief and public services spending, and often are criticised for failing to ‘capture the middle ground’ or ‘shift to the centre’. Thus, a common explanation of the Conservatives’ electoral misfortunes since 1997 is that they have adopted extremist positions—travelling too far to the right on the ideological spectrum.1 Now there is a debate about how far the Liberal Democrats are to the left of New Labour.2