Variations in attachment of meaning to votes through space: how inequalities impact voting behaviour.

Neoliberalism is currently in crisis, and its survival post-financial crisis has raised a number of questions, particularly considering the concurrent growth of inequality in occidental societies. By using space and place to study political, economic, and social inequalities, insights can be developed regarding how these inequalities manifest electoral behaviours and the attachment of meaning to votes, potentially challenging existing popular narratives.The research will build upon existing literature on neoliberalism's theorised relationship with inequalities, populism, absenteeism, and recent election outcomes by conducting spatial and statistical analysis on open-source, geographic, socioeconomic data in conjunction with qualitative analysis, to explore the following themes:
- How socioeconomic, spatial inequalities (deprivation, employment, education, income, population change across LSOAs) impact political participation;
- How these inequalities impact political attitudes;
- How these inequalities affect the attachment of meaning to votes, and how this varies across neighbourhoods in the UK.
By using spatial-analytical methods to examine electoral variables and by linking these observations to different spatial histories, convincing explanations of wider voting patterns become apparent.