ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with how political restructuring affects opinion polling in capitalist societies. It considers two of the four aspects of Complex Politics: these are opinion polling and political culture, and opinion polling and party system. The chapter looks at the comparatively stable relationships which evolved between the classes and parties until the end of the 1960s and the performance of the opinion pollsters by focusing on Britain as a critical case. Britain has one of the most stable and enduring political systems among post-war West European capitalist states, especially in relation to electoral politics. Contemporary electoral politics is considered to be far more volatile than it was in the past, the party system which emerged in the immediate post-war period was comparatively stable, and supported by both 'class alignment' and 'partisan alignment'. Class alignment reflected the fact that people tended to vote for a particular party on the basis of their social class.
