Rational Choice and Class Voting

This article uses data from the 1987 British Election Study (BES) to examine the rationality of class voting. Class differences in support for parties of the left and right have usually been seen as a direct consequence of interests in income redistribution. The authors examine intervening variables that might explain the relation between class and vote, including attitudes toward redistribution and other economic issues and beliefs about the parties' concern with social classes and other groups. Controlling for these variables does not eliminate the direct effects of class. Some evidence is found that social influences may affect vote directly without operating through attitudes, as suggested by the Columbia voting studies and also that voters do not use the same standards in evaluating the parties, contrary to the assumptions of the prevailing spatial model. Substantial revisions are necessary if rational choice theory, as conventionally understood, is to account for class voting.