In an era of intergenerational inequality and political polarization, what might make older voters support greater government spending on the young? Building on literature concerning family-centric political preferences, we theorize that older voters support pro-youth policies and vote for pro-youth parties when they perceive younger relatives to be struggling financially due to emotional bonds and shared risks. Using a large, original survey of British adults, we find that negative evaluations of the financial wellbeing of one’s younger relatives – which are linked to their objective economic assets – are associated with support and prioritization of state investment in education, childcare and housing. They are also associated with opposition to the incumbent Conservatives, in a relationship mediated by assessments that this party represents young people badly. The implications are important for understanding how emotional connections, more than self-interest, sensitize voters to family-wide economic hardship and help produce ‘family-centric’ economic voting.

Populist rhetoric – presenting arguments in people-centric, anti-elite and ‘good v. evil’ frames – is said to provide populist parties and candidates with an advantage in electoral competition. Yet, identifying the causal effect of populist rhetoric is complicated by its enmeshment with certain positions and issues. We implement a survey experiment in the UK (n≈9,000), in which hypothetical candidates with unknown policy positions randomly make (non-)populist arguments, taking different positions on various issues. Our findings show that, on average, populist arguments have a negative effect on voters’ evaluations of the candidate profiles and no effect on voters’ issue preferences. However, populist arguments sway voters’ issue preferences when made by a candidate profile that voters are inclined to support. Among voters with strong populist attitudes, populist arguments also do not dampen candidates’ electoral viability. These findings suggest that populist rhetoric is useful in convincing and mobilizing supporters but detrimental in expanding electoral support.

Research has found that asset accumulation is associated with vote preferences, with those with a high number and value of assets being more likely to vote for centre-right parties. Yet the bulk of this literature often falls short of accounting for alternative mechanisms that could be driving this relationship. In this letter, we investigate the association between patrimony and the vote longitudinally, assessing the effects of within-person changes in patrimony on party support. Drawing on an 11-year panel from Britain, our results indicate that patrimony, whether measured by the number of assets one owns or the total value of these assets, is unrelated to support for the Conservative Party. This finding is solid against several robustness tests. Our data analysis suggests that patrimonial voting in Britain – as identified in prior research – may be driven primarily by pre-existing differences between asset owners and non-owners rather than the assets themselves.

During the coronavirus pandemic in the United Kingdom, media outlets shifted their focus from divisive political issues to more neutral topics like lifestyle, sports, and entertainment. This study explores how this change in media content relates to partisan divides in satisfaction with democracy. Using data from a representative survey of 201,144 individuals, we linked respondents’ perceptions of democratic performance to their daily media exposure. We did so by analysing 1.5 million tweets from British newspapers using a topic modelling algorithm to identify shifts in topic salience and sentiment using sentiment analysis. Our findings reveal a decline in partisan media exposure during the pandemic, associated with increased satisfaction with democracy at both individual and collective levels, and a narrowing of cross-party divides. These results contribute to discussions on affective polarization, the winner-loser gap in democratic evaluation, and media framing effects, highlighting the potential influence of depoliticized news coverage on democratic attitudes.

Does the EU’s performance compared to neighboring countries influence public support? Using a benchmarking approach, we argue that people compare their country’s performance within the EU to that of a non-EU country, shaping their attitudes. The COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2020 provides an ideal test case, as governments launched vaccination programs at different speeds. The UK began weeks before EU countries, allowing us to examine its impact on EU support. Using an Unexpected Event during Surveys Design (UESD) with Eurobarometer data, we find that the UK’s early rollout significantly reduced specific policy support for the EU but did not consistently affect diffuse support. Our findings offer key insights into attitudes toward European integration and performance evaluations.

One reason given for declining levels of trust in politicians and institutions is the incidence of scandals involving voters' representatives. Politicians implicated in scandals, especially financial scandals, typically see their constituents' support for them decrease. It has been suggested that these specific negative judgements about a representative's misconduct spill over onto diffuse political trust in the system as a whole. We argue that the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal in the United Kingdom is a strong test of these scandal spillover effects in a non-experimental context. Yet, using a multilevel analysis of survey and representative implication data, we find no evidence for these effects. This is despite voters being aware of their MP's scandal implication, and this awareness affecting voters' support for their own MP. We conclude that voters' judgements about their constituency representatives are unlikely to affect their diffuse political trust.