Chapter 9 provided clear statistical evidence of the increasing electoral importance of party. We turn now to an investigation of the legislative consequences of this change. Since the analysis focuses on the responses of individual MPs to altered electoral conditions, a necessary preliminary question is whether MPs noticed any change.

THE PERCEPTION OF THE ELECTORATE

The perception by nineteenth century MPs of why their constituents voted the way they did is clearly not a subject on which definitive statements can be made. Yet it is necessary, if we are to argue that the change in electoral orientation had any direct effect on legislative behavior, to say something about how MPs perceived the electoral parameters within which they acted. Did Victorian politicians know when electors were voting for parties and when they were voting for men? In particular, did contemporaries in the late 1860s and 1870s know or believe that voters were becoming more party-oriented and less candidate-oriented?

One approach to answering these questions is to look at the trends over time in the number of election contests with only three candidates. In its simplest form, the decision on the part of a prospective candidate to contest a given constituency presumably depended on the value of a seat, the cost of an election campaign, and the probability of victory.