UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

How the Geographic Clustering of Young and Highly-Educated Voters Undermines Redistributive Politics

O'Grady, Tom; Wiedemann, Andreas; (2024) How the Geographic Clustering of Young and Highly-Educated Voters Undermines Redistributive Politics. The Journal of Politics 10.1086/729939. (In press).

[thumbnail of ms_full.pdf] Text
ms_full.pdf - Other
Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 17 February 2025.

Download (6MB)

Abstract

We analyze support for the welfare state across time and space in Great Britain. Using multilevel regression and post-stratification with historical data and an original survey, we show that a virtually identical majority of people supported those policies in the mid-1990s and in 2020, but patterns of support were very different. Young and highly-educated people are now the strongest supporters, as are the youngest and most highly-educated geographic areas, mirroring divides over ’second-dimension’ issues like Brexit. However, young and highlyeducated voters are clustered in a small number of places, with the Labour party struggling to win moderately-educated and moderately-young areas. As a result, the Left’s problem in majoritarian systems is not the rise of second-dimension politics per se, but rather how its supporters are distributed spatially along that dimension. A majority of voters in favor of welfare and redistribution no longer translates as easily into winning a majority of places in support.

Type: Article
Title: How the Geographic Clustering of Young and Highly-Educated Voters Undermines Redistributive Politics
DOI: 10.1086/729939
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1086/729939
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: political geography; redistribution; education
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10191364
Downloads since deposit
0Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item