The puzzle of high political partisanship among ethnic minority young people in Great Britain

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have found that ethnic minorities in Britain have similar levels of partisan attachment as white UK respondents. However, we find that this hides substantial ethnic differences in levels of partisanship within age groups (minorities are younger on average) and that there is a substantial minority party attachment premium that is greatest for the youngest respondents. Our paper examines the factors that account for the substantial partisanship gap between minority and white UK respondents by the time they enter the electorate. Using waves 3, 5 and 7 (2011–2016) of the Understanding Society youth panel, which follows 10–15 year olds in the UK, we model both the early attainment of party attachment among respondents (the first time we observe them as part of the youth panel) and the subsequent retention of this party attachment up to age 15, or acquisition of party attachment among young people who had no partisanship at the time of first observation. We find that differences in levels of parental partisanship and political engagement are the key factors in explaining the difference in minority and white UK acquisition and retention of party attachment during this critical period of political development.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnicity
• party attachment
• young people
• politics
• partisanship

Acknowledgements

Understanding Society is an initiative funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and various Government Departments, with scientific leadership by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, and survey delivery by NatCen Social Research and Kantar Public. The research data are distributed by the UK Data Service.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Nicole Martin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8480-7175

Notes

1 The size of this gap depends somewhat on the data source and question wording used. Out of using different combinations of the two party attachment questions on Understanding Society and either waves 1 or 3 of the data, as well as the party identity wording on the Ethnic Minority British Election Study/British Election Study, we find the pattern of a substantial party attachment gap between younger minority and white UK respondents and a steeper age gradient of party attachment for white UK respondents in four out of the five comparisons.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council; through Understanding Society at the University of Essex, [grant number ES/K005146/1], and through the Research Centre on Micro-Social Change at the University of Essex, [grant number ES/L009153/1].