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Uneven Development and Political Behaviour

An Analysis of Regional Variations in British Political Opinion in the MID-1990s

Department of Geography, University of Bristol, UK

Charles Pattie

Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK

Uneven development provides a spatial template within which political parties can mobilise support based on voters' feelings of relative well-being. In Great Britain, the two main political parties have traditionally based their appeals around the country's class cleavage, with Labour support concentrated among the relatively deprived groups and areas the two 'two nations' pattern. Recent decades have seen a weakening of this class alignment, with voters' choices increasingly reflecting their perceived economic situations, plus those of their local areas and the country as a whole. Nevertheless, as the analyses reported here for 1995-96 show, the traditional two 'two nations' cleavages remain strong elements of the country's electoral geography.

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