The Scottish Electorate: The 1997 General Election and Beyond

This book draws on original research to discuss the outcome of the 1997 general election in Scotland. The data on which the research is based is from the Scottish and British Election Surveys of 1997, 1992, 1979 and 1974, thus the book offers the most rigorous and up-to-date assessment of Scottish electoral politics available. The authors use the survey data to assess the extent to which nationalism continues to gain strength as a broad outlook on politics, both in the sense of support for specific constitutional change and in the sense of a pervasive attitude to the policy agenda. They also seek to explain Scottish voting behavior and to place the results of the election in the context of changing political attitudes since the 1970s.