Ethnic Minority Voters And Non-Voters At The 2005 British General Election
On Saturday 9 September 2006, Dr Roger Mortimore (Ipsos's Senior Political Analyst) spoke at the EPOP Conference in Nottingham*, on "Ethnic Minority Voters and Non-Voters at the 2005 British General Election", delivering a paper by himself and Kully Kaur-Ballagan (Ipsos Head of Ethnic Minority Research). The paper, which draws on Ipsos research conducted for the Electoral Commission after last year's election, explores the turnout and votes of Britain's various Black and minority ethnic (BME) communities. Turnout is strongly associated with a positive attitude to elections in general, as might be expected; but there is also some evidence of a strong community effect, with those who live in areas with many other BME residents disproportionately likely to have voted. Surprisingly, there is no evidence that attitudes to the government's policy in Iraq had any significant effect. The findings also illustrate how a high quality research design, including respondents from...
