New Approaches to Understanding the Role and Effect of UK Party Leaders in General Elections
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How leaders matter: new approaches to understanding the role and effect of UK party leaders in general elections Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by Peter Andersen. October 2020 Table of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... 3 List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ 5 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1 : Introduction ........................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2 : Reviewing the Literature on Leaders: Evaluations, Elections and Effects ........... 23 Chapter 3 : Research Design, Methods and Approach ........................................................... 59 Chapter 4 : Fluid or Stable? Leadership Evaluations During a Turbulent Period of British Politics (2014-17) ................................................................................................................... 85 Chapter 5 : Party Leaders and Campaigns: Masters of Persuasion? .................................... 126 Chapter 6 : From Footnotes to Headliners: UK Party Leaders on Election Night ................. 176 Chapter 7 : Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 214 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 227 List of Sources for BBC Election Night Broadcasts ............................................................... 245 Research Methods Appendix ............................................................................................... 248 Model Output Appendix ...................................................................................................... 280 2 List of Figures Figure 3.1: Visualisation of the Structure of an Example Path Model ................................... 74 Figure 3.2: Visualisation of Indirect and Direct Effects in Path Models ................................. 74 Figure 3.3: Visualisation of a Multilevel Model Structure ...................................................... 75 Figure 3.4: Machine Learning Approach Flow Chart .............................................................. 78 Figure 4.1: Average Like-Dislike Scores (0-10) for Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and UKIP Leaders in Waves 1-13 of BESIP, February 2014 – June 2017 ....................................... 98 Figure 4.2: Absolute Average Change in Individual Like/Dislike Evaluations of Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and UKIP Leaders in Waves 1-13 of BESIP, February 2014 – June 2017 ....................................................................................................................................... 99 Figure 4.3: Change in Like/Dislike Evaluations During a 'Normal' Wave With No Leadership Change ................................................................................................................................. 102 Figure 4.4: Change in Like/Dislike Evaluations During 'Transition' Waves With Leadership Change ................................................................................................................................. 104 Figure 4.5: Diagram of Conservative Path Model Coefficients (Waves 1-4) ........................ 107 Figure 4.6: Diagram of Labour Path Model Coefficients (Waves 1-4) .................................. 107 Figure 4.7: Diagram of Liberal Democrat Path Model Coefficients (Waves 1-4) .................. 108 Figure 4.8: Diagram of UKIP Path Model Coefficients (Waves 1-4) ...................................... 109 Figure 4.9: Diagram of Conservative Path Model Coefficients (Waves 7-10) ...................... 110 Figure 4.10: Diagram of Labour Path Model Coefficients (Waves 4-7) ................................ 111 Figure 4.11: Diagram of Liberal Democrat Path Model Coefficients (Waves 4-7) ................ 111 Figure 4.12: Diagram of UKIP Path Model Coefficients (Waves 7-10) .................................. 112 Figure 4.13: Wave Level Effects on Party Leader Evaluation Change .................................. 116 Figure 5.1: Machine Learning Approach Flow Chart ............................................................ 133 Figure 5.2: Campaign Vote Intention and Leadership Evaluations for Labour and the Conservatives ....................................................................................................................... 137 Figure 5.3: Campaign Vote Intention and Leadership Evaluations (Very Strong Party Identifiers Only) ................................................................................................................... 138 Figure 5.4: Campaign Vote intention and Leadership Evaluations (No Party Identification Only) ..................................................................................................................................... 140 Figure 5.5: Change in Leadership Evaluations (2015 & 2017), Split by Partisan Groups ...... 142 Figure 5.6: Example Confusion Matrix and Model Performance Measures ........................ 144 Figure 5.7: Percentage of Correctly Classified Vote Choice (2015) ...................................... 146 Figure 5.8: Percentage of Correctly Classified Vote Choice (2017) ...................................... 146 Figure 5.9: Range of Predicted Values in Voting Conservative at the 2017 General Election ............................................................................................................................................. 159 Figure 5.10: Range of Predicted Values in Voting Labour at the 2017 General Election ..... 159 Figure 5.11: Predicted Values of Voting Conservative at the 2015 General Election .......... 161 Figure 5.12: Distribution of Predicted Values in Voting Labour at the 2015 General Election ............................................................................................................................................. 161 Figure 5.13: Flow of the ‘Goldilocks’ Vote (2015), Pre-Campaign Vote Intention to Actual General Election Vote Choice ............................................................................................... 171 Figure 5.14: Flow of the ‘Goldilocks’ Vote (2017), Pre-Campaign Vote Intention to Actual General Election Vote Choice ............................................................................................... 173 Figure 6.1: Percentage of Spoken Words of Overall Coverage about Party Leaders (First Hour of Coverage) ......................................................................................................................... 185 3 Figure 6.2: Percentage of Spoken Words Relating to Party Leader Interviews or Describing the Whereabouts of Leaders (First Hour of Coverage) ........................................................ 186 Figure 6.3: Percentage of Spoken Words Discussing Party Leaders (First Hour of Coverage) ............................................................................................................................................. 191 Figure 6.4: Comments and Questions related to Campaign performance 1955-2017 ........ 194 Figure 6.5: Negative and Positive Assessments of Party Leaders’ Personality and Leadership Abilities 1955-2017 .............................................................................................................. 197 Figure 6.6: Praise and Blame of Party Leaders for Election Result (1955-2017) .................. 205 Research Methods Appendix Figure A1: Visualisation of Indirect and Direct Effects in Path Models ................................................................................................................................. 251 Research Methods Appendix Figure A2: Machine Learning Flow Chart with Annotations . 256 Research Methods Appendix Figure C3: Coding Hierarchy .................................................. 269 Research Methods Appendix Figure C4: Summary of Themes for Chapter 6 of Election Night Broadcasts ............................................................................................................................ 271 4 List of Tables Table 3.1: British Election Study Internet Panel (W1-W13) Fieldwork Information .............. 70 Table 4.1: British Election Study Internet Panel Fieldwork – Leadership Change Information ............................................................................................................................................... 94 Table 4.2: Percentage of Panel Recording No Change in Leadership Evaluations ............... 101 Table 4.3: R-Squared Estimates for each ‘Typical’ and ‘Transition’ Models ........................ 113 Table 4.4 Full Multilevel Model for Absolute Change in Leadership Evaluation .................. 119 Table 5.1: Variables used in each Lasso model in predicting vote intention ....................... 143 Table 5.2: Labour Vote Choice (2015) - LASSO Model Coefficients ..................................... 150 Table 5.3: Conservative Vote Choice (2015) - LASSO Model