Party Politics and Elections - Research Paper Example

Research project Introduction Several motions have been raised regarding the cause and effect relationship betweenan election candidate’s policies and voter percentage in the national elections in the U.K. A majority of scholars have argued that a candidate’s policies play a significant role in determining his clinching of a political position. On the other side, other political scientists believe that other factors like a candidate’s charisma, party euphoria and the amount of resources in relation to the campaign are the determinants of an election outcome (Weisberg, 2007). The research aims at determining an empirically relevant phenomenon for explaining voting patterns in the U.K national elections. Do appropriate candidature policies determine the votes a candidate gets? The response to this quiz is necessary for system modelling for a national election candidate’s success in the United Kingdom. If the political candidate’s policies primarily affects the manner in which voters will vote, other political forces such as party euphoria and candidate’s charisma would be irrelevant. It would then be imperative to understand how a nominee’s policies will affect the national legal, political structure in all aspects. On the other hand if policies don’t change the voting patterns, political candidates tend to focus on other significant elements. For instance, political candidate’s previous history and leadership qualities among others. Previous studies indicate that candidates with good policies command higher votes as compared to others. The clearest way of deciding if voting patterns are affected or prefer policy choices is by comparing voters’ preferred policies and others (Kellstedt and Whitten, 2013). Research Question My research question will be: Does appropriate Party policies determine the number of votes a candidate is most likely to get? The research question tries to establish a link between setting down party policies with reference to voter turnout and how this shapes up. In this study, we identify the significance of party systems and its relationship to the number of votes a party’s nominee gets. Hypothesis Political party nominee’s get more votes as a result of appropriate party policies. In this case, the dependent variable is proposed, and the independent variable is party politics. As a result of proper party politics that citizens find appealing tends to attract more votes towards a party for its candidate while non-appealing policies tend to push away votes for a party’s nominee. dependent variable Independent variable dependent variable Intervening variable Operationalization of the central concepts In the hypothesis framework showing the relationship between the party policies and number of voter turnout, the intervening variable is the party policies. In this case party popularity is a direct result of the cause of appropriate party politics. In this scenario party popularity increases with favourable politics and tends to reduce as a result of non-favourable politics. Policies for healthcare, taxation welfare and inflation directly affect the citizens and favourable policies lead to an increase in popularity and likeability thus resulting in a high number of votes. These policies will regulate the set down laws pertaining to different areas thus different people will like the party increasing its popularity and swaying the votes to the party’s favour. Data Analysis The questionnaire was given out to 1300 respondents with a 90% cooperation hence enabling 1170 respondents. The questionnaire contained three questions divided into three sections: issues affecting the U.K, Policies being put in place by different parties and How one voted. Matters concerning the U.K included: -terrorism, taxation, Inflation and unemployment. On policies being employed by different parties involved: question on which party was best able to handle those issues. The third part focused on the party one voted for with respect to policies (Bealey, Chapman and Sheehan, 1999). The fourth issue was on how respondents felt different policies reacted to various issues facing the society and how their governments would have responded to the various problems. This also focused on how well the respondents thought a conservatives Government would handle its various issue as well as a Labour Government. The question of the different Governments of various parties was on how different party policies were addressing different problems. Some of the issues addressed include: crime, education system, National Health Service, immigration, terrorism, Economy, Tax, war in Afghanistan and current financial crisis Figure 1: Major problem facing Britain today On the major problem facing Britain today, majority of the respondents felt that inflation and unemployment were a major problem. Majority of the respondents cited economic reasons that included: inflation and rising prices, taxation, state of the economy, unemployment, living standards and financial crisis. Second in the list was the issue of insecurity that included: war on terrorism, security, war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq and law and order in Britain. The final issue involved social welfare that included: education, environment, National Health Service, benefits system and poverty. Economic issues scored highest with 40% of the major issues affecting Britain. Terrorism and human welfare both tied at 30% (Fisher and Vliezen, 2010). Britain had been hard hit by inflation and employment amongst other economic down turn. The inflation that was being experienced may be attributed to the global economic crises that hit the country. On the other hand, the inclusion of its soldiers to fight alongside U.S soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan battle made the taxpayer endure higher taxation to maintain the soldiers in war (Johnstone, 2014). Fig 2: Policies being employed by different parties When questioned about which party being able to best handle the issues affecting Britain, majority of the respondents felt that Green party had the best policies as far as the common problems were concerned. Green party had a 26.74% lead and was closely followed behind by labour party with 20.09%. Liberal Democrats had 16.83%; Conservatives had 14.24%, United Kingdom independence party had 11.95% while British national party had 10.14%. The parties also led in opinion polls as listed below. All other parties were not known hence got any percentage. The commanding lead from the green party could be attributed to its policies in the economic revolution as well as security. Green party paid significant attention to societal welfare at the expense of the war unlike the other parties like the democrats (Voteforpolicies.org.uk, 2010). The voting trend in 2010 elections During the 2010 elections majority of the voters voted for the conservatives who emerged winners with a 36.1%, followed closely by Labour party at 29%, Liberal democrats came in third with 23% while others could only manage 11.9% (BBC, 2010).The table below indicates the outcomes of the elections opinion pools and election issues among the four parties namely; Democrats, labour party Green Party and Conservatives. The voting trend in 2010 elections During the 2010 elections majority of the voters voted for the conservatives who emerged winners with a 36.1%, followed closely by Labour party at 29%. Liberal democrats came in third with 23% while others could only manage 11.9% (BBC, 2010).The table below indicates the outcomes of the elections opinion pools and election issues among the four parties namely; Democrats, labour party Green Party and Conservatives. The democrats (Voteforpolicies.org.uk, 2010). Graph1: How a Labour Government would have addressed the different issues Comment about the graph here Graph 2: the levels of party popularity with reference to party policies. Amongst the issues that the labour Government tackled so well were the National Hospital service, the education system and its fight on terrorism. Policies affecting issues such as Government crime, immigration, taxation and finance were either done well or poorly but remained just the same. Policies concerning matters such as the war in Afghanistan and Economy were poorly done. As a result of the poor policy formation strategies Labour, party came second in the polls as well as in the final elections garnering 20.09% and 29% in opinion and general elections respectively. Table 2: How a Conservative’s Government would have addressed the different issues. The conservatives Government policies had tackled the issues of National Health Service and war on Afghanistan extremely well. Other matters like crime, education, terrorism and taxation were also handled fairly well. On the issues such as immigration, economy and Government finances were neither well done nor poorly done but rather remained average. In this study, I omitted several observations and the usage of other data sets due to limited writing space and the scope of my study. I have also left out several variables that I deemed rather insignificant to my study while focussing on important ones. On the first part of issues I had to generalize the issues into economic issues, social welfare issues and security issues so as to bring out the objectivity of the research analysis. Furthermore, when it came to voting trends and opinion polls I only used four parties due to limiting space and so as to make my research more objective. Many other parties had used similar patterns, and I chose the most outstanding one of them all as a representative of the others. Govcrime GovEdu Govimmi GovNHS GovTerror GovEcon GovTax GovAfgh GovFin Very well # # Fairly well # # # # Neither well nor Badly # # # Fairly Badly Very Badly How the labour Government handled each of these issues (News.bbc.co.uk, 2010). GovCrime GovEdu Govimmi GovNHS Govterror GovEcon GovTax GovAFgh Govfin Very well # Fairly well # Neither well nor Badly # # # # # Fairly Badly # Very badly # How a conservative’s Government would have handled each of the following issues (News.bbc.co.uk, 2010). The Chi-square test Opinion Polls National Elections Rows Total Liberal democrats 16.83% 23% 39.83 Labour party 20.09% 29% 49.09 Conservation party 14.24% 36.1% 50.34 Green Party 26.74% 11.9% 38.64 Column total 77.90 100 177.90 The general formula for each cell’s expected frequency is: (Ti X Tj)/N where: - Eij is the expected frequency for the cell in the ith row and the jth column. -Tiis the total number of counts in the ith row. - N is the total number of counts in the table. For opinion polls; (77.9/177.9 X 100)= 44.01 For Final elections; (100/177.9 X100) =56.4 X2=∑ (E-O) 2/E): Opinion polls National polls Row total Liberal Party A E 39.83 Labour Party B F 49.09 Conservation Party C G 50.34 Green party D H 39.64 Column Total 77.90 100 177.9 Chi-square = A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H=37.67. We can thus say the probability of getting elected using policies is 37.67 out of the whole hypothesis. This indicates that the null hypothesis may be true. Conclusion: From the above data, it can be concluded that the use of party policies is not sufficient to get one a majority of the votes cast. From the data, we can clearly see that despite the green party being at the lead in opinion polls and with appropriate party politics, it wasn’t sufficient to guarantee them a higher voter turnout. If we follow the empirical statistics, we can conclude that Green party was able to manage only a single seat in U.K despite having the best and appropriate party politics. On the other hand, the conservationist party with moderate party politics was able to be declared the winner with the majority of the votes at 36.1%. Another deeper look into the second most popular party in the opinion polls was the labour party and was able to maintain its second position even at the national elections. With respect to the chi-square method gives us a colossal value. This indicates a high level of discrepancies between opinion polls in terms of policies and final voter turnout. I can thus openly conclude that party systems play a minor role in the determination of the final voting patterns in the U.S.A. Looking for the conservationist party, we see that at the appropriate party politics it was rated the last but came out strongly in votes to beat all the rest. I would thus recommend more research on the influence of party politics and voter turnout in the election. We can thus say that other factors including party euphoria, leadership ability, resources amongst other factors have a role to play in determining the votes. Reference List Constraints on party policy change. (2000). Colchester, ECPR Press. Bealey, F., Chapman, R. A., and Sheehan, M. (1999). Elements in political science. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press. Bochel, H. M. (2011). The Conservative Party and social policy. Bristol, Policy Press. Cole, M. (2009). Political parties in Great Britain. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Dubner, S. (2014). Freakonomics » How Much Does Campaign Spending Influence the Election? A Freakonomics Quorum. [online] Freakonomics.com. Available at: http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2014]. Gauka, A. (2013). The politics of party policy from members to legislators. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Jones, B. (2004). Politics UK. Harlow, England: Pearson/Longman. Kellstedt, P. M., and Whitten, G. D. (2013). The fundamentals of political science research. Ukpollingreport.co.uk, (2014). UK Polling Report. [online] Available at: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/east-of-england-european-candidates-2014/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2014]. Weisberg, H. F. (2007). Political Science: The Science of Politics. New York: Algora Pub. Appendices Part 1: Issues affecting Britain On the question of ISSUE, As far as youre concerned, what is the single most important issue facing the country at the present time? 1. Inflation and the economy 2. Social welfare issues 3. Insecurity and Terrorism 4. Education Part 2: Preferred party by policies Which party is best able to handle these issues for a better U.K? 1. Labour Party 2. Conservative Party 3. Green Party 4. Liberal Democrats Part 3: Preferred Government policies by party politics 1. How well do you think a Conservative government would handle each of the following issues? CONCRIME Crime in Britain CONEDU Britain’s education system CONIMMI Immigration CONNHS The National Health Service CONTERROR The risk of terrorism in Britain CONECON The economy in general CONTAX The level of taxation CONAFGH The war in Afghanistan CONFIN The current Financial Crisis 1 Very well 2 Fairly well 3 Neither well nor badly 4 Fairly badly 5 Very badly 2. How well do you think the Labour government handled each of the following issues? GOVCRIME Crime in Britain GOVEDU Britain’s education system GOVIMMI Immigration GOVNHS The National Health Service GOVTERROR The risk of terrorism in Britain GOVECON The economy in general GOVTAX The level of taxation GOVAFGH The war in Afghanistan GOVFIN The current Financial Crisis 1 Very well 2 Fairly well 3 Neither well nor badly 4 Fairly badly 5 Very badly Read More