The American voter's British cousin

It is now nearly a half century since the publication of The American Voter. Greeted with wide acclaim, the book quickly exercised enormous influence, not only in the United States, but in many other countries as well. One of those countries was Great Britain where the British Election Study (BES) closely modeled on the American National Election Study (ANES) was initiated in 1964. In this paper we present selected findings from two recent books, Political Choice in Britain (2004) and Performance Politics and the British Voter (2009) that describe what the BES data collection tells us about forces affecting British voting behavior. A valence politics model featuring valence (not position) issues, party leader images, and flexible partisan attachments has powerful explanatory power. The model also works well in the United States, thereby warranting the inference that the American voter's British cousin is a close relative.