Has the British Public Depolarized Along With Political Elites? An American Perspective on British Public Opinion

In contrast to the growing elite policy polarization in the United States, the British Labour and Conservative Parties have converged dramatically on economic and social welfare policy over the past two decades. The authors ask the following question: Has there been a parallel depolarization in the British mass public’s policy attitudes and partisan loyalties, pointing to a general mechanism that extends beyond the U.S. case? The authors report analyses of election survey data from 1987 to 2001 that document significant declines in the association between British citizens’ policy positions and their partisanship (partisan sorting). However, they find only modest changes in the dispersion of British respondents’ self-placements on the policy scales (policy extremity) and in mass attitude constraint, defined as the correlations between citizens’ positions across different policy issues. These trends in the British public’s policy preferences and partisan loyalties are mirror images of the trends in the American public’s policy preferences and mass partisanship.