All aboard? Scottish and Welsh multi-level voting; competence, leadership and blame-attribution

ABSTRACT

Scotland and Wales went to the polls on the same day in 2016, the former in a post- independence referendum environment and the latter shortly after receiving further devolved powers. Despite this horizontal simultaneity, the results in these elections displayed considerable diversity. Sub-state elections are often classified as second-order and as such are characterized by lower turnouts, anti-government voting and small party support. However regional elections in the United Kingdom sit uncomfortably in this definition. This article focuses on the experience of Scotland and Wales, exploring regional and national factors that help to explain regional electoral outcomes. It examines valence models, multi-level blame attribution, and relative national and regional party leader support. In a second stage, a multinomial logistic regression is undertaken, finding that the relative importance of regional and national factors differs between the two regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Devolution
• regional elections
• valence politics
• UK elections

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Alia Middleton http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0868-262X

Notes

1. Blair and Brown leading the Labour Party, Iain Duncan Smith and Howard leading the Conservative Party and both Kennedy and Campbell leading the Liberal Democrats.