There is a growing body of literature which suggests that voting patterns are not independent from space yet few empirical investigations exist which take explicit account of space. This article examines the determinants of voting patterns across constituencies in England and Wales using spatial econometric methods. The results suggest that while socioeconomic factors are key determinants of party vote shares in constituencies, there is strong spatial autocorrelation in voting patterns. We find that each major political party is influenced by space to different extents with the Liberal Democrats visibly exploiting spatial autocorrelation to increase their vote shares.
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Paper provided by University of the West of England, Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number
0709.