The Extent to Which Voting by Ethnic Minorities Reflects the Voting Behaviour of the Whole Electorate

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The Extent to Which Voting by Ethnic Minorities Reflects the Voting Behaviour of the Whole Electorate

In present day there are currently 12 ethnic minority MP’s in

parliament, all of who belong to the Labour party. Ethnic minority

groups tend to be part of the immigrant population and so are more

likely to belong to the working class and so have a stronger party

identification with labour. This can be shown in the 1997 general

election in which 70% of Asian voters and 86% of Black voters voted

for labour. The difference in the two could be to do with the fact

that Asian people in particular have been very successful in Britain

with setting up businesses so in the 1997 elections the 25% of Asian

voters that voted for conservative didn’t feel the effect of Black

Wednesday as significantly as the rest of the electorate. In the

opinion poll of the above source after labours first term in

government 84% of black voters & 80% of Asian voters said that they

preferred the labour government. This could be to do with the fact

that one of the conservative policies in 2001 election was

immigration, which led to a stronger party identification between

ethnic minorities and the labour party.

However although ethnic minorities tend to have a strong partisan

alignment with labour they have a low voter turnout. However in the

2001 election Britain saw the lowest voter turnout since 1918 with

only 57% of the electorate turning out to vote. So you could argue

that by not turning out to vote they reflected the voting behaviour of

most of the electorate who felt that in the 2001 election labour was

‘bound to win’.

In the 2001 election most of the ...

... middle of paper ...

...orate, because although they seem to

have a stronger party identification (which I think is because most of

them are in the working class) like the whole electorate at the moment

they are feeling voter apathy. But mainly because I don’t think that

your ethnicity is an important factor in which party you vote. I think

that other factors such as mass media, judgemental voting and party

leader likeability are more important and within these factors ethnic

minorities seem to vote the same way as the majority of the

electorate. Because no single person will ever reflect the voting

behaviour of the whole electorate whether there white, black, 25, 60

have blue eyes or green eyes, because there are so many different

factors that influence voting behaviour and because of the period of

volatility that is occurring at the moment.

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