Presidentialization of Presentation and Impact

Abstract

This chapter examines the pattern of stability and change in the role of Conservative and Labour party leaders in post-war general elections in Britain. This is an area of study that remains terra incognita by and large, especially relative to other influences on the vote, like social class, partisanship and issues. A good part of the reason for its neglect has been continued widespread acceptance of the unanimous conclusion of survey-based studies of the 1950s that party leaders did not matter for the vote. With the class alignment strong, the evidence suggested that people voted for their party pretty much regardless of who was at its head. Thus, party leaders were often ignored, as in the first survey-based voting study in Britain when they were mentioned only once — and that was merely in connection with the number of radio broadcasts they had made during the campaign (Benney et al. 1956). Alternatively, after consideration of any effect they might have had on the vote, they ended up being passed over as secondary, indistinguishable components of more encompassing party images and largely irrelevant to the understanding patterns of stability and change in election outcomes:

(A) leader’s real contribution to the party in the way of popular support is a great deal less than his reputation might lead one to believe … He (the leader) is not expected to transcend the party and he is not indispensable … (He) is to a large extent the embodiment of general political attitudes.

(Trenaman and McQuail 1961: 60; see also Milne and Mackenzie 1958)¹