Josh Goddard

Hi Ben, thank you, and yes definitely! Perhaps you could drop me a DM and we could arrange from there?

Thanks!

Housing and electoral behaviour: The changing face of class voting in advanced democracies Scholarship on the relationship between social structure and electoral behaviour has traditionally operationalised voters’ economic or class situation…

New from my phd student @joshgoddard98.bsky.social: he shows, using many election and panel studies across the advanced democracies, that housing status has replaced occupational class as a key predictor of voting. Class voting is now about assets, not income www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Really excited to share my new article published in @electoralstudies.bsky.social!

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Thank you!

Great comparative research from @joshgoddard98.bsky.social . Highly intuitive from a UK pov, too:

Thanks very much!

Thanks Chris!

Thanks Lucy!

Housing and electoral behaviour: The changing face of class voting in advanced democracies Scholarship on the relationship between social structure and electoral behaviour has traditionally operationalised voters’ economic or class situation…

Happy to see the first paper from @joshgoddard98.bsky.social ’s PhD project published today! 🙌

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Class voting is alive and well, once we recognise the importance of asset (housing) ownership as well as labour market position as a class marker

Housing and electoral behaviour: The changing face of class voting in advanced democracies Scholarship on the relationship between social structure and electoral behaviour has traditionally operationalised voters’ economic or class situation…

Overall, housing is a central and growing cleavage in politics, challenging class dealignment story. Relying on occupation risks mischaracterising the class basis of politics - we must update how we think about this to reflect era of asset-based capitalism

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www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Looking at more detailed housing market groups further highlights this. House value is especially significant. Again, housing is more important in predicting centre-right and radical left support than occupation, income or education.

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Tenure is now a central predictor of support for these parties. For the centre-right, it has displaced (middle-class) occupation in this respect. This marks a big shift in their coalitions, but does not imply that they have become less affluent (as class voting lit tends to find).

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Housing cleavages have grown significantly over time, driven largely by centre-right and radical left electorates becoming increasingly structured by housing tenure.

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To integrate housing into these debates, I conduct the first systematic cross-national study of how housing market groups vote, looking at 14 countries over the past 40 yrs

Tenure groups vote differently: owners significantly more likely to vote centre-right and renters radical left.

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I argue asset price inflation and financialisation have made housing an increasingly central driver of social inequality. However, debates around political sociology and class voting still tend to think about voters' economic circumstances in terms of occupation or labour market positions

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Really excited to share my new article published in @electoralstudies.bsky.social!

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No no don't talk silly, no conflict! (Though your mum's info was wrong, it was far later on)

That's the second consecutive morning where my first word of the day has been a swear word. Test cricket eh?

Several recent studies have found that politicians aren't very good at estimating public support for policies. But we have little idea about whether politicians are good at knowing which issues are more important to voters. Our new publication has a first go at answering this question rdcu.be/eQGm4

A chart from "The British General Election of 2024" (out soon!) which is relevant to this debate - here's what voters wanted (black line) and what they though Labour (red) and Cons (blue) would do on tax and spend during the campaign. Higher figures = "put them up". Some important lessons here 1/?

Last Friday, new English Indices of Deprivation were released for the first time since 2019, measuring relative deprivation in 33,755 areas of England across multiple domains. How do these geographic disparities relate to voting patterns in the UK’s last General Election? A short thread 🧵

Something to do with rounders?

Interesting that this would suggest they underperform their national polling in Wales? (Given UKIP outperformed their 2016 national result in Caerphilly by about 10 points)

No, and as it says they had a councillor elected in Eye. I do suspect this is the effect of large landowners influence though (as v powerful figures) and not particularly broad support. My pet theory is nonconformism (and Liberal link) played a big role in limiting fascist success in rural Britain

they were given short shrift by the villagers (at least if my nan was to be believed!). Think its a bit of a myth they had much support beyond that - it was a strong Liberal area largely due to noncomformism still having a good foothold

I grew up in a village in north Suffolk where the fascists turned up to support a local farmer who had refused to pay tithes in resisting bailiffs (there's still a memorial to the animals seized in the 'tithe wars). There was certainly some support for the NUF from large landowners/farmers but

Yes potentially kind of inflating the Reform numbers twice over (2024 voters for left leaning parties + women underrepresented in the non-DK sample). Just all the more reason to normalise publishing don't know figures up front!

It has 42% of women responding "don't know"

Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman, Edith Cavell, Admiral Nelson, Robert Kett, my nan, Ed Balls, Lynn Benfield, Jarrolds, the 16th centruy weaving trade, Aviva, Colmans mustard, Julian of Norwich...your boys took one hell of a beating