Party Realignment and Single-Issue Voters

This paper studies the effect of a single-issue referendum on political party realignment. We consider the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of a referendum on the British exit from the European Union. We look at the change in positions of Conservative Members of Parliament using a novel dataset tracking their opinions on British membership of the EU and their election outcomes between 2015 and 2022.
Our findings show that MPs who resisted switching to a pro-Leave position faced significantly higher electoral losses. We then consider various models of switching, showing that safe seats are strong predictors. These results highlight the sensitivity of political parties to single-issue politics, underscoring how such environments can contribute to broader populist movements in modern democracies., , , # Party Realignment and Single-Issue Voters

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfz6d](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfz6d)

## Description of the data and file structure

This set of data and code replicates all tables and figure from ``Party Realignment and Single-Issue Voters''.

### Files and variables

#### File: code\_data.zip

**Description:** 

\#1 Stata .do file to run results [uk_ele.do]. This loads the xlsx and csv files and generates all tables and figures in the paper.

\#2 Hand collected MP position excel sheet [Remainers Spreadsheet Updated (1).xlsx]. This contains the information on MP positions on Brexit (see data section for details).

Variables: 

* Remain in 2015: was MP remain in 2015.
* Switched?: did they switch.
* What are they doing now?: their current occupation.
* Status of Seat?: who is in the seat they occupied.
* Year Left: if they left, the year they left the seat.

\#3 Financial Times dataset on constituency variables [financialTimes*ge2017*dataset.cs...