Place-Based Politics: How Will Local Contexts Shape Voters’ Behaviour in the Next Election?

British electoral geography has profoundly changed over the past decades. Place has become central to the language of elections and policy offerings from parties. Political divides have opened up between voters in locations strongly connected to global growth and those that are not. How do place-based factors matter for voting behaviour, and which political attitudes do they operate through? This talk explores the impact on voting choice of contrasting experiences of social and economic change and the emergence of a reinvigorated centre-periphery cleavage — reflected in diverse expressions of bias and resentment — which could influence voters’ retrospective evaluation of the government in power.