Voter behaviour and the decline of the Liberals in Britain and New Zealand, 1911-29: some comparisons

Abstract

This article examines the three long-standing explanations for the decline of the British Liberals by seeing how far they fit the case of ten towns in New Zealand, 1911-31, which were Liberal strongholds. The article starts by pointing to the remarkable similarities between the decline of the Liberals in Britain and the decline of their counterparts in New Zealand. It then briefly summarizes the history of the decline of the New Zealand Liberals, and indicates that the British data relating class with voting behaviour are too poor to test the three explanations adequately. It then uses a statistical analysis of the ten towns to test the adequacy of the three explanations, all of which make the crucial assumption that working class Liberal voters had a stronger preference for Labour than for the Conservatives. The results of the analysis show that all three explanations and the assumption underlying them are highly questionable. Show more