title: How leaders matter: new approaches to understanding the role and effect of UK party leaders in general elections
Creators: name: Andersen, Peter
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2021

description: Leaders of political parties are the most well-known and recognisable politicians in the UK. Party leaders dominate political coverage as the face of their party. Due to the level of attention that party leaders receive, voters can quickly evaluate leaders and these evaluations are widely assumed to provide part of the explanation for voter behaviour. Analysis in this thesis furthers the understanding of party leaders by examining leaders in three distinct contexts. I examine: long-term changes in voters’ evaluations of leaders from 2014-2017; how significant leader effects were during the 2015 and 2017 general election campaigns; and how the role of leaders has been framed in the analysis of election outcomes presented in election night broadcasts since 1955. This thesis progresses the study of leadership evaluations beyond the consideration of which leadership traits may be the most important, to consider the durability of voters’ leadership evaluations over time. I investigate change in leadership evaluations in thirteen waves of the British Election Study (BES) Internet Panel that covers a three-year period. Results suggest that once voters’ evaluations of party leaders become established, they remain remarkably stable thereafter. Furthermore, I find that voters distinguish between outgoing and incoming leaders of the same party, advancing arguments that leaders can appeal to voters independently from the party they lead, at least in the short-term. Evidence presented in this thesis also furthers the arguments that voters compare leaders of different parties when forming their evaluations. I investigate leader effects on voter behaviour during the 2015 and 2017 UK general election campaigns. It is well-documented that leaders dominate contemporary campaigns, but it is less clear that leaders can affect vote choice during this period of frantic campaigning. I explore whether changes in leader evaluations during the campaign ultimately affect voters’ party choice. Changes to the evaluations of party leaders only have a marginal effect on most voters, as most voters predictably support a party that aligned with their pre-campaign attitudes. However, based on the analysis of pre-campaign attitudes, I identify a sizable group of voters whose vote choice is more strongly affected by changes to leader evaluations. These effects were found to be stronger on this group of voters in 2017, relative to 2015, where leadership evaluations also changed more dramatically over the campaign. While researchers have increasingly recognised leader effects on voter behaviour, I investigate how leaders are used to explain election results in broadcasts and whether this reflects trends in the academic literature. I analyse each BBC election broadcast from 1955-2017, finding party leaders occupy a substantial proportion of discussion in modern programmes. Modern broadcasts of election results seek to explain the election outcome almost instantly after polls have closed and place leaders at the forefront of their coverage. Greater emphasis is placed on the campaign performance of party leaders when interpreting the results and speculation begins about the resignations of losing leaders. Participants in the broadcasts increasingly consider leaders to be responsible for election outcomes, especially when elections are understood to be ‘winnable’.