The evidence in Chapter 9 reveals clearly that split voting and nonpartisan plumping declined markedly in the hundred years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Whereas 38.7% of all sampled voters cast nonpartisan votes in the general election of 1818, only 5.8% did so in December 1910. The decline, however, was neither linear nor monotonic. Each Reform Act seems to have introduced a new era in terms of the levels of non-partisan voting registered at general elections, and the downward trend could be interrupted, as shown by the resurgence of nonpartisan voting in the decade following 1847.

These findings raise three questions. First, why was there any longterm decline in non-partisan voting at all? Second, why are the figures periodized by the Reform Acts? Third, what explains the “short-term” or year-to-year fluctuations within reform periods? To answer these questions, which concern the trends over time in national non-partisan voting rates, it will help to examine constituency rates cross-sectionally as well. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses should be grounded in a proper understanding of the causes of split voting and non-partisan plumping at the individual level. To establish such an understanding is the first objective of this chapter.

EXPLAINING NON-PARTISAN VOTING

Both split voting and non-partisan plumping indicated the use by electors of some criteria other than partisan affiliation. In order to explain nonpartisan voting, then, it is necessary to identify what those other criteria were.