The Decomposition of Differences in Two-Party Alignment

The association between major-party alignment and social class has been of central interest to political scientists for some time, stimulating statistical investigations of varying degrees of sophistication. A particulary appealing approach has been suggested by Butler and Stokes allowing decomposition of a party’s share of the vote into what they term class composition, class support, and interaction effects. The appeal of this method derives not least from the fact that it may be applied to a comparison of only two regions or constituencies, whereas the multiple regression analyses, of for example, Crewe and Payne, and Miller, require many more observations. Closer examination of the Butler and Stokes procedure, however, reveals two unfortunate phenomena – an algebraic error in the derivation of the decomposition equation and, of rather more consequence, a lack of symmetry in the definition of the support, composition, and interaction effects. This asymmetry serves to cast doubt on the practical usefulness of the suggested approach

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