How Social Class Impacts the Relationship Between Attitudes Towards Inequality and Voting Behaviour: Analysis from the British Social Attitudes Survey

Over the last 50 years, there has been a huge rise of income inequality across the western world. Puzzlingly, this has not been met with any increase in public concern about the levels of inequality. Whilst this has been occurring, there has been a surge in support for right wing parties, particularly from the working class. This thesis takes a quantitative approach, with the aim of developing a greater understanding of how class mediates the relationship between attitudes of income inequality and voting behaviour in the United Kingdom. I argue that individuals vote against wealth redistribution (for right wing parties) because they are largely unconcerned about income inequality. I test whether this is more or less true for the middle or the working class. I utilise secondary data from the British Social Attitudes Survey, and conduct binary logistic regression models, using two measures of social class to analyse the results (NatCen Social Research, 2021). Findings demonstrated support for the relationship between voting behaviour and attitudes about income inequality, and tentative support for the interaction effect of social class.