Popular Leader Evaluations across Three UK General Elections: A Qualitative Analysis of Focus Group Data

This research evaluates popular evaluations of major party leaders across three general elections in the UK. Using an innovative longitudinal panel dataset produced by the Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QESB), the study examines how people in England, Scotland and Wales during the 2005, 2010, and 2015 general elections viewed the leaders of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. These evaluations are compared to the assessments of the other parties included in the 2015 campaign: the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, The Green Party and the UK Independence Party. The data collection and analysis replicates qualitative electoral research of Winters and Campbell and Carvalho and Winters, an innovative contribution to longitudinal qualitative research. Previous findings have suggested that the extent of candidate familiarity can shape the categories that voters use to evaluate candidates and that leadership competence is more useful to understand party success and failure. This research examines the similarities and differences in the evaluation structures used for party leaders across the three elections. It also compares the patterns of categorisation found in the 2015 elections with the findings from previous research.