Political disengagement in Britain: Demographics and constituencies

Political disengagement is often understood as a decrease in voter turnout and trust in governments. Yet academic research suggests there are several types of political disengagement, driven by different political and social beliefs and attitudes.

This Insight explores types of political disengagement and how common they might be in constituencies in Great Britain.

Types of political disengagement in Western democracies

Academic literature distinguishes between two broad types of political disengagement in Western democracies. Professor Paul Webb at the University of Sussex summarises these as “dissatisfied democrats” and “stealth democrats” and shows how they manifest in the UK.

Dissatisfied democrats are dissatisfied with how democracy operates, are keen to be much more involved and are mostly educated and well-off. Stealth democrats, who are typically less educated and less well-off, are also dissatisfied with democracy but don’t want to play an active part in it.

What about in Britain?

Using data on how people feel about politics and democracy in Britain from the 2019 British Election Study (BES), five groups can be identified (the ‘stealth democrat’ and ‘dissatisfied democrat’ groups most closely resemble the concepts above):

1. Engaged representative democrats (about 23% of the sample): they talk about politics most days and pay a fair amount of attention to it. They are a little dissatisfied with democracy in the Great Britain and strongly disagree with the need for strong leaders and referendums. They agree with the statement that politicians don’t care about people like them.
2. Stealth democrats (14%): they don’t talk about politics and pay little attention to it but agree that politicians do not care about people like them. They are a little dissatisfied with democracy, think the country needs a strong leader and neither agree nor disagree with a need for referendums.
3. Dissatisfied democrats (19%): they discuss politics every other day and pay it a fair amount of attention but feel very dissatisfied with democracy and strongly disagree that the country needs a strong leader. They agree referendums are good and strongly agree that politicians don’t care about people like them.
4. Engaged direct democrats (38%): they discuss politics some days and pay it a fair amount of attention. They are a little dissatisfied with democracy and disagree the country needs a strong leader, but think referendums are good. They agree that politicians don’t care about people like them.
5. Unsure (6%): they pay some attention to politics but don’t know how often they talk about it, how satisfied they are with democracy, whether the country needs a strong leader or more referendums, and if politicians care about people like them.

Who is in these groups?

Using BES data about people’s characteristics and data about British constituencies (such as census data and recent elections data), we find that the people in the groups described above are also more likely to share certain demographic characteristics. These characteristics are summarised in the table below, which focuses on the more disengaged groups.

Characteristics of disengaged groups

How are these groups spread across constituencies?

Using the same data, we can estimate the proportion of the population in each constituency who fall into each of the three more disengaged groups.

The tables below show the ten constituencies with the highest and lowest proportions of people in each group. They include both an estimate of this proportion and the range of values in which this proportion is likely to fall. This range indicates the uncertainty around the estimates based on our modelling but doesn’t take account of other areas of uncertainty, for example the possibility that people have not answered survey questions truthfully and the decision to include some variables but not others.

Constituencies in the top 10 have a higher proportion of people falling into one of the more disengaged groups while constituencies in the bottom 10 have lower proportions. For example, about 24.7% of people in Easington in County Durham are in the ‘stealth democrats’ group, compared with only about 6.7% in Bristol West. Data for all constituencies is included in the spreadsheet at the bottom of the tables in this Insight.

Estimated proportion of population who are ‘stealth democrats’

Top 10 constituencies (tenth place tie)

Bottom 10 constituencies

Estimated proportion of population who are ‘dissatisfied democrats’

Top 10 constituencies

Bottom 10 constituencies

Estimated proportion of population who are unsure

Top 10 constituencies (tenth place tie)

Bottom 10 constituencies (tenth place tie)

Source for all tables: HoC Library modelling using BES (panel study, Wave 17; 2019 General Election results file) and constituency level data
Download all the data in .xlsx format (60kb)

Comparing groups and constituencies

Constituencies with higher proportions of people in one of the more disengaged groups also feature among the constituencies with the lowest turnout at the 2019 General Election, including Easington, Glasgow North East, Kingston upon Hull East and Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, and Preston.

Despite substantial differences in the form of political disengagement between the ‘stealth democrat’ and ‘dissatisfied democrat’ groups, the Blaenau Gwent constituency appears in the top ten for both types. Out of the bottom ten constituencies, five are the same for these groups: Battersea, Bristol West, Islington North, Vauxhall and Brighton, Pavilion.

Among the constituencies with the lowest proportion of ‘unsure’ people, three are also among those with the lowest proportion of ‘stealth democrats’: Chelsea and Fulham, Cities of London and Westminster, and Kensington.

This raises interesting questions both about the constituencies with higher proportions of politically disengaged people and about those people themselves. What kind of circumstances encourage disengagement: a lack of opportunities and support, life experiences, social deprivation, safe seats?  While this Insight cannot answer those deeper questions, anyone interested in finding out could start by exploring conditions in the constituencies with the highest proportions of disengaged people.

Further reading

• Different styles, different publics: a typology of political disengagement , House of Commons Library
• Political disengagement in the UK: who is disengaged? House of Commons Library
• Prof Chris Hanretty, ‘An Introduction to Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification to Estimate Constituency Opinion’, Political Studies Review, 2020, 18:4

About the author: Elise Uberoi is a researcher at the House of Commons Library, specialising in statistics on Parliament and elections

Acknowledgement: The Library would like to thank Prof Chris Hanretty (Professor of Politics, Royal Holloway University) for guidance on the modelling in preparation of this Insight.

Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash