Community Cohesion and Voter Turnout in English Parliamentary Constituencies

Abstract

Voting turnout varies both over time and across space. In Britain there has been a secular trend in the postwar period for decreasing turnout at parliamentary elections (from a high of 84.1 per cent in 1950 to 75.4 percent in 1987, with a low point of 71.8 per cent in 1970). Such temporal variations in turnout are dwarfed in scale, however, by differences in turnout across constituencies at the same election. In the 1970 election, for example, turnout ranged from a low of 44.9 per cent in Stepney to 85.3 per cent in Cornwall North. Though diminished slightly, variation in constituency turnout rates remained significant in the June 1983 election (from a low of 51.8 percent in City of London and Westminster South to a high of 81.1 percent in Leicestershire NW).