Introduction — Explaining Open Voting in England 1832–68

Abstract

Electoral politics in mid-nineteenth century England took place in a constituency social context. Interpretations of voting in Britain today suggest that it may be influenced by factors such as social class or house ownership. Different accounts put different weight on the separate or joint importance of the level of education of the individual elector, the type of community in which they vote or other social variables. But most analyses of British electoral behaviour in the first 30 years of mass suffrage after 1948 stress the importance of social class for partisan choice and would agree with Pulzer that ‘class is the basis of British party politics, all else is embellishment and detail’ (Pulzer, 1967, p. 98). Recent conceptualizations of class are multidimensional, and suggest that ‘the relation of class to party…is not a static one’ (Butler and Stokes, 1969, p. 94),¹ but given the continuities that exist in British political culture and institutions, if class is significant under mass suffrage, then it may also have been important under the previously more restricted franchise and under open voting between 1832 and 1868.