A divided kingdom? Variation in polarization, sorting, and dimensional alignment among the British public, 1986–2018

Abstract

Understanding changes in the structure of public opinion is necessary to evaluate both contemporary claims about political divisions in Brexit Britain, as well as to uncover any long-term mapping of public opinion on the depolarization and subsequent polarization of elites from the birth of New Labour to the aftermath of the Great Recession. I assess trends from British Social Attitudes surveys, utilizing recent conceptual and methodological distinctions between different features of public opinion change. I find that the public, on average, moved to the left during the early 1990s, to the right during New Labour, and back to the left from 2010. Such oscillations are even more pronounced for positions along a welfare dimension. In contrast, average positions along a libertarian-authoritarian dimension were constant until around 2010, when the public became more liberal. Polarization of left-right opinion has increased in recent years but does not match that estimated between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, while low and stable levels of polarization are estimated along libertarian-authoritarian and welfare dimensions. Overall trends are dis-aggregated by social class, educational attainment, party identification, strength of partisanship, interest in politics, and position on Europe. Further, the relationships between positions along these three ideological dimensions vary systematically across time and between groups.