The Impact Of Issue Voting

The Impact Of Issue Voting Dealignment is the change from voting according to class. In recent times there has been a change from partisan alignment, voting based on class, for example people within the AB category have historically been more likely to vote conservative whereas people in the C2 and DE category have been more likely to vote Labour. From 1997-2005 the amount of people voting for conservative in the AB category fell by 6% and the amount of people in the C2 category went up 12%. This shows that class alignment may no longer be the main deciding factor that people use when voting in an election. b) Using your knowledge as well as the extract, asses the impact of issue-voting on the results of general elections. Issue voting is when somebody votes in an election based on the politicians or partys stance on a certain current political issue. Issue voting have become more prevalent than it was in the twentieth century and the valence theorises that electoral success is based on a partys ability to deliver on key issues. Past examples of partys focusing on issue voters are sleaze and the economy in 1997, raising standards and elimination poverty in 2001, war and immigration in 2005 and Labours handling of the economy in 2010. The focus that election candidates have put on current issues instead of just party ideology in recent years show that issue voting is becoming an increasing factor that the electorate takes into consideration when voting for one party or another. Issue voting may be as cause or product in the decrease of other types of voting such as alignment voting. Issue voting might also signify the decrease in emphasis on ideology stopping partys from focusing on what the ideal future for the country and instead fixing issues that the UK has currently. In conclusion I think that even though issue voting is more popular than it has ever been in the past that there are still important factors such as class and age are still present and while not as popular as in the past they are still the basis of a large portion of the populations vote. c) A link still exists between class and voting. Discuss the extent to which social class still influences the voting behavior of Britains electorate. The statement is partially correct because in the past social class was one of the biggest factors that affected voting behavior in the UK and although it is no longer as strong a factor as it used to be in deciding votes it is still there. In the 2005 General Election the amount of senior and middle managers / executives (AB class) was 28% for Labour and the same class for Conservatives was 37%. This data shows that although the statistics for the upper classes are much closer than they used to be there is still a large difference in the amount of people in the AB class bracket that vote conservative rather than Labour. The cause of this could be that people who work in higher positions feel that conservative ideology and policy is more beneficial for them because of policies like privatisation, because they are more likely to afford private health care. Also tax cuts of up to 4 billion which voters in the AB category might feel that if they can afford pay for private health care then why should the be expected to help fund the NHS. The Semi and Unskilled Workers/ Casual Workers/ Unemployed (DE classes) shows even more clearly that there is still a link between class and voting. In the General election of 2005 48% of voters in the DE bracket voted for Labour whilst only 25% voted conservative. These statistics show that there is an even stronger link to social class and voting behavior with the lower classes than the higher classes. This may be due to Labours policies of not wanting to privatise aspects of public services like the NHS which Conservatives have policies wanting to do so. However even though there is clear evidence that class effects voting behaviour in major way there is also a lot of evidence to show that the link between class and voting is getting smaller each election. For example from 1997-2005 the results of voters in the AB bracket voting conservative fell by 6% and from 1997-2005 the results of voters in the DE bracket voting Labour fell 10%. A reason for this change in voting over the past few election could be the increasing popularity of the Liberal democrat party which from 1997-2005 increased its share of the vote by at least 3% in every class bracket. The most noticeable gain for the Lib Dems was in the AB bracket in which they increased their share of the vote by 8% which could attribute to the decline in both Conservatives and Labours AB bracket. From 1997-2005 the total vote for the Liberal Democrats has increased by 21% emphasising that people are no longer just voting for the party which has traditionally represented their class. Arguments can be made that there is no longer a single working class, instead the working class has been split into two, the old and the new. The old working class consists of manual workers belonging to trade unions and the new working class which are workers with better qualifications that work in the public sector. In conclusion I believe that although the link between class and voting still exists it is getting smaller and smaller each election and people are starting to vote due to different qualities such region, age, ethnicity and media rather than class alignment which never truely existed in the first place because there was always a percentage of upper classes that voted for Labour and lower classes that voted Conservative or people of all classes that voted for small partys.

Mericans :: World Literature Sandra Cisneros

In the short story "Mericans" by Sandra Cisneros, we appear to be reading about a small place in Mexico. The author uses many details in the story for us to visualize the cultural environment. The mix of Spanish words in the story such as, La Virgen de Guadalupe and la ofrenda give the sense of a different culture. The use of the awful grandmother kneeling at mass makes you visualize a specific heritage and cultural behavior. The word "barbarian" that the grandmother uses to describe the birthplace of the children, also points out cultural differences. It seems the author is trying to make us sense a native culture, and not to make assumptions based on physical characters. The "awful grandmother" (Cisneros p.30) is an example of a person in the story living in two cultural worlds, while she clings to her cultural heritage, she still doesn't want to accept the American culture of the children. The children, in the story, may look like Native Americans or Mexicans, but their main language is English. The children also use examples of American culture with the comic characters, "Flash Gordon" and "Ming the Merciless." The children in the story embrace more of the American culture than a native culture with the use of the comic characters. The little girl tends to struggle understanding her grandmothers cultural heritage, and it seems to take her quite a bit of effort doing it. The children seem to be content playing and carrying on without the bother of what the grandmother is doing, and they have no references to heroes of their native culture. The story tends to have a familiar setting to me, one that I am around, especially with the children running around and playing carefree. My grandmother is quite religious and she also does many of the things that the grandmother in the story does.

“Journey’s End” by R.C. Sherriff Essay

How does R.C Sherriff present life in the trenches for the soldiers or World War 1 and the conditions they had to endure? In the play â€Å"Journey’s End† by R.C. Sherriff, he describes many conditions that the soldiers had to endure. Life in the trenches was bad, but the men who were signing up for the war were told that it was all a big game, a walk in the park. However, when they got there they got a shock. R.C. Sherriff wanted to tell them all to know the truth about the war. First he starts the play by describing the living conditions: [A pale glimmer of the moonlight shines down the narrow steps into one corner of the dugout.] The words â€Å"narrow† and â€Å"corner† show that they live in a small, narrow and cramped place. Not only was it cramped but it was muddy, cold and wet, and it would be very uncomfortable. If the moonlight can come into the dugout and hit onto a corner of the wall, shows that it is very small and with a company of soldiers living their then that will make it even tighter and there wouldn’t be much privacy. The soldiers had to sleep in their uniforms to stay warm, and incase there was an attack at any point, then they would be ready at a moments notice. [As he carefully turns his sock this way and that – feeling it against his face to see if it’s dry,] Having it on constantly would cause moist to appear in the boots and any crevices in the body so they had to stay as clean as possible. But when they took off their boots, because they had them on for a long time, often their toes would come off as well. When reading this, I thought about how uncomfortable they must feel, and this same message would be out to all other readers, and would put people off from going to war. As well as the cramped, cold and wet conditions, they had to put up with little rations of food that tasted horrible, but on occasions, a nice piece of chicken. These are the men that are fighting for our countries, and our lives, and all they get is a small ration and a â€Å"cheer up† from the next poor sap who has to suffer: Trotter: What’s this? Maison: Meat sir. Trotter: I know that. What sort? Maison: Sort of cutlet, sir. The words â€Å"sort of cutlet† shows that the food that they get is low quality, a sort of meat that not good enough to be actual cutlet, and it’s not good enough to feed the British Army. They are being fed the bare essentials, and if they got any less then I think that they would die from malnutrition. This would also put people off from going to war, because they know that if they are not going to be treated accordingly, and not like animals, then they wont go to war. If the soldiers weren’t worrying about their food, then they were definitely worrying about the war itself. Many men went mad because of the loud crashes of the bombs and the constant rattle of the guns, some soldiers were so afraid of the war, and because they were told that it was a game, then they would make up conditions so that they didn’t have to fight: â€Å"I don’t think that I can manage any supper tonight, Stanhope. It’s this beastly neuralgia. It seems to be right inside this eye. The beastly pain gets worse every day.† The words â€Å"beastly† â€Å"pain† and â€Å"worse† shows that the conditions were so bad, that Hibbert would pretend that he had neuralgia so that he could be sent home. There were many men out in the war who didn’t want to be there, but had to go, and they would try anything to get home. Some soldiers, because of the pressure to go out and fight, they would kill themselves, but this was rare. Along with the pressure of war, they had to deal with other things that affected the mind, like sleep and other people’s thoughts. When they didn’t get enough sleep they would get agitated and would spend days without sleep, and if they got on the wrong side of someone, then this would agitate them more, and could lead to outburst at the smallest things: Stanhope: Sit down. Raleigh: It’s all right, thanks. Stanhope (Suddenly shouting) Sit down! Stanhope had not slept for days and just the little thing of Raleigh getting on the wrong side of him made him snap. R.C. Sherriff shows that Stanhope is angry in the stage directions: (Suddenly shouting). He gives the reader the impression that Raleigh, because he is the newest, that he doesn’t fit in with the rest of the group, that what he is doing is wrong, because he doesn’t know any better. Because of this Stanhope gets very angry very quickly. All of these are ways of showing the conditions in which the men had to face during the war. Not only was it the war itself but the pressure of being in a cramped environment, with lots of other men, in the cold and dirt, with little food. R.C. Sherriff brings to the readers what the conditions of war are really like.

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