Elections in UK Parliament in 2015 and 2017: Reasons for Voting Despite Citizens Preferences

Student: Barsukov Nikita

Supervisor: Irina Busygina

Faculty: Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences

Educational Programme: Political Science (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2019

The research contributes to the field of political science which is devoted to the electoral behavior of voters. The paper examines why UK citizens voted despite their preferences in the 2015 and 2017 parliamentary elections. Four hypotheses are given as explanations: strategic, signal and economic voting, as well as a hypothesis based on the voter’s belief system. All of them are confirmed by this research: each phenomenon was present at the parliamentary elections with different explanatory power. Hypothesis testing was conducted through quantitative analysis tools: logistic regression, interactions between independent variables, and applying of machine learning classification metrics (accuracy, precision, and recall).

Full text (added May 14, 2019)

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