Husbands' and Wives' Voting Behaviour in Britain: Class-dependent Mutual Influence of Spouses*

Abstract

We investigate the relative impact of respondent's and spouse's class on voting behaviour using logistic diagonal reference models. We test several hypotheses with data from the British Election Surveys of 1974, 1979, 1983 and 1987. We find that there are still differences between men and women in the extent to which their own class positions account for the way they vote, women being more influenced by their partner's class position than are men. We also find that, although men have in general a higher class position, a 'class dominance' model cannot account for the greater influence of husbands than of wives. Our results do however modify the conventional approach to class in important respects. We find significant interaction effects, women in the higher and lower service class and women in blue-collar occupations behaving much like men: that is, they take more account of their own class than of their partner's. Conversely, women in the petty bourgeoisie and in the routine nonmanual class take relatively little account of their own class positions; their behaviour is more in line with the conventional assumption of male dominance. Finally, no trends over time, whether towards 'indi vidualism', 'feminism' or 'sharing', could be detected.