The multilevel voter: Identity, territory and electoral behaviour

This thesis is concerned with sub-state politics and the influence it has on political behaviour and attitudes. Parting company with much of the existing literature that examines elections in multilevel systems, I argue that it is incorrect to assume that factors at the statewide level determine electoral behaviour and attitudes at the sub-state level. Rather, elections at the statewide and sub-state level should be seen as interdependent. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the thesis and sets up the analytic framework upon which my research is based. I also give a broad discussion of my method and explain why I choose Scotland and Wales as cases in my argument. In Chapter 2, I outline and describe my primary data sources – the devolved election studies – by detailing their origins and design. Chapter 3 examines what voters know about sub-state politics. I examine data from 10 election studies in total and introduce a unique new dataset of press coverage of the NHS to examine policy attribution. I find that considerable proportions of citizens have little knowledge of sub-state political issues. Chapter 4 focuses on the role that national identities play in vote choice at sub-state and statewide elections. I also introduce the concept of party blocs in Scotland and Wales. Results indicate that national identity is a substantial predictor of bloc vote choice. In Chapter 5 I examine how sub-state identities influence how voters cast their ballots at elections to different levels of government. My results indicate that vote switching is more prevalent among those who identify with a sub-state identity (instead of a statewide identity). Chapter 6 tests whether split-ticket voting at devolved elections is driven by strategic motivations. While voters appear to understand when it is in their interests to cast a strategic vote in their constituency, there is no evidence suggesting they do in the list vote. In the final chapter, I conclude by highlighting the findings of this thesis and remarking on the importance of this work for future analyses of elections in multilevel systems

The Referendum that Changed a Nation: Scottish Voting Behaviour 2014–2019

Drawing on data from the Scottish Referendum Study and subsequent Scottish Election Studies, this book provides the first in depth analysis of how voters engaged with the independence referendum in 2014 and what impact this has had on vote choice, polarisation and engagement in Scotland since then. The book contains eight chapters, and discusses how voters engaged with the referendum campaign, explains vote choice by examining reactions to the cues of parties, leaders and events, and compares the importance of these to calculations about risk