Intergenerational Social Mobility and Partisan Choice

Abstract

David E. Butler and Donald E. Stokes have collected the best available data about the political effects of intergenerational social mobility in Britain, but they are wrong in their conclusion that “social mobility can make only a small contribution to the fact that more than a quarter of British electors fail to vote in accord with their class.” They have defined social mobility too narrowly. My reanalysis of their data shows that over a third of those Britons who do not support the predominant party of their class are intergenerationally mobile. The upwardly mobile constitute 12 per cent of the Labour party electorate, and 75 per cent of the middle-class Labourites.