Is Any of It Really Relevant? Disability, Demographics and Political Representation: Evidence from a UK Survey Experiment

It is estimated that around 16.8 million people in the UK identify as disabled, or one in every four people, making them one of the population’s largest minority groups (Kirk-Wade et al, 2024; Office for National Statistics, 2024). Despite these figures, the number of disabled representatives in Parliament remains low at an estimated 12 MPs with a disability in the current government (The Disability Policy Centre, 2024), far below a representative number of 160 MPs. Building upon the existing research in the field and using data from an online survey experiment (N=2,001), this paper focuses on symbolic representation and provides answers to the following questions: does a voter’s disability status influence their belief in a candidate’s ability to represent? Is the effect moderated by the voter’s demographics? I analyse the role of disability as a determinant of symbolic representation, and if demographics may help explain this effect.