Party Members in the United Kingdom

Few, if any, fully-fledged democracies prosper without political parties. But parties are in trouble almost everywhere - both in terms of public perceptions, which are becoming more and more negative, and in terms of membership numbers, which (with the exception of some newer, more radical entrants into the market) have been dropping like a stone for some time. Unless we are willing to see parties become essentially elitist, hollowed-out institutions, this should give us cause for concern. In a healthy democracy, parties cannot simply be brands run by elites for their own and for our collective convenience. They need to be rooted in, rather than disconnected from, society. Their programmes need to reflect meaningful differences. Their leaders and their parliamentary candidates are best chosen by competitive election rather than appointment or inheritance. Party members can help ensure that all this occurs in practice as well as in theory. They can also, of course, make the difference between a party winning or losing an election since contests are decided not merely nationally, in the media, but locally, on the ground.

In spite of this, we do not know as much as we might do about party members in the twenty-first century. The Conservatives have, it is true, been reasonably well served recently, not least by our own surveys carried out in 2009 and 2013. However, the last academic survey of Labour members was carried out back in 1997 and the last survey of Liberal Democrat members was completed in 1999. UKIP members have never been surveyed. Just as importantly, there has never been a study of the members of several parties carried out concurrently, thereby enabling researchers to ask them exactly the same questions at exactly the same time. Nor has there been any systematic study of people who leave political parties after joining them.

We will change all this. Using samples gleaned from the massive panels collected by internet pollsters, and therefore minimising the logistical and other problems posed by enlisting the parties themselves, we will, in mid-May 2015, carry out simultaneous surveys of the members of the UK's four biggest parties, along with Labour's potential trade union affiliated members and those citizens who feel strongly attached to one party or another yet do not choose to join them. Then, a year later, we will survey those who have left their parties. In order to study the dynamics as well as the demographics of party membership, we will include some of the same questions asked in the pioneering surveys conducted in the 1990s. By fielding the surveys just after the general election and the formation of a new government, we will also contribute to the study of the so-called ground war between the parties and the attitude of their members to different governing options. We will talk, too, to the parties to compare their perspectives.

Our project will benefit academic and non-academic audiences. Politicians and journalists will henceforth know about party members rather than have to make assumptions or educated guesses. Parties can use that knowledge to boost recruitment and retention of traditional and less conventional members. Political scientists interested in parties will not only be able to judge the effectiveness of internet polling as a research tool but also have a number of questions answered about members' social characteristics, attitudes, activities, campaigning and their reasons for joining or leaving - as will those interested in trade unionists' involvement in politics and those interested in comparing voter preferences for different types of candidates to those expressed by the party members who select them. Finally, our research will inform and equip the members themselves. They of course know what they think and what they do as individuals, and in their local parties, but they do not always know how they compare to members in other places and in other parties. Knowledge is power.

This research will benefit several stakeholders, both non-academic and academic. The former group includes: (1) party members (potential and actual); (2) parties' elected representatives and the professionals who work at party HQ and in local organisation who help service and recruit the membership; (3) those media and think-tanks who make a fundamental contribution to public understanding of politics; and of course (4) the public itself.

Academic stakeholders are dealt with in more detail in another section. Briefly, they include political scientists working on political parties, elections and campaigning, government formation, political finance, and political participation. The latter is also of interest to sociologists and anthropologists who are interested in organisational cultures. In addition, the researchers involved in the project will considerably enhance not only their existing contacts with research users and subjects, but also their skills in project-management, and, more specifically their familiarity with qualitative analysis software.

When it comes to non-academic beneficiaries, existing members of political parties will, for the first time, be able to compare, contrast, and evaluate their experiences, rights, responsibilities, and indeed costs with those of members of their own and other parties. This will help them get more of what they want out of participation. Potential party members will be able to gauge the advantages and disadvantages of membership more accurately. Both actual and potential members will also be confronted with any systematic differences between the kinds of candidates and MPs they want and those that are favoured by the electorate as a whole. This will help them to think about how and who they select.

The parties themselves will benefit from the research because it will allow and encourage them to reflect on the success or otherwise of their own membership recruitment, servicing and retention practices, as well as to compare them to those of other parties. Although each party faces its own unique challenges, many of them are generic and would therefore benefit from some form of knowledge exchange; however, because they are competitive institutions, the latter is something they find next to impossible to do of their own accord. Party professionals and elected representatives will have quality information on what differentiates those who join, those who have an affinity but are not currently members and - just as importantly - those who have left. This will help them better hold onto the first group, pull in more of the second group, and think about what they can do to minimise the size of the third group. They will also have more data than they currently possess on the potential of looser forms of 'membership' that many of them are experimenting with and, in the Labour Party's case, the possibilities offered by boosting affiliated individual membership among trade unionists.

The media and the public will benefit from this research because it will allow them to rely on hard data rather than hearsay and possibly outworn or simply mistaken assumptions about parties and their members, what they want and what they actually do. For instance, of the most common (and, as far as both turn-out and 'disconnect' from parties is concerned, damaging) of these assumptions is that 'parties are all the same these days'. This research will show how that is and is not the case, as well as potentially demonstrating that those who join political parties are not as unusual as their small numbers might suggest. This, together with any increase in parties' ability to recruit and retain members, will go some way to offsetting the decline in political participation, which would in turn render our politics more lively, more legitimate, more responsive and more representative than it currently is. This would represent a considerable contribution to the democratic health and future of the UK.