ABSTRACT
Despite receiving a great deal of scholarly attention, a thorough understanding of the relationship between class and political behaviour in Britain remains elusive. One particularly challenging debate centres around what has come to be known as the 'ecological paradox’ in class voting. The paradox arose when divergent conclusions regarding recent trends in class voting were reached using analyses based on public opinion survey data and others based on aggregate census and electoral data. Specifically, survey researchers have continually turned up evidence of a decline of class voting (Franklin, 1985, among others) while analysts using aggregate data at the constituency level have persistently documented either continuity or even a strengthening of the class alignment (Miller, 1978; Eagles and Erfle, 1988). To account for these discrepant results, William Miller (discoverer of this ecological paradox) argued that the nature of the class alignment is shifting such that it ‘ ... becomes less and less about "people like me", and more and more about "people around here"’ (1978:283).
