Positional issues, valence issues and the economic geography of voting in British elections
区分了立场和效能两种经济投票理论，通过对比保守党与工党执政时期，检验它们对英国选举地理的不同预测，揭示经济地理如何影响政党支持。
A body of research has built up in recent years linking the changing geography of party support in British elections to variations in the country's economic geography. Consistent with the economic vote model, government support has been shown to be higher than average in affluent areas and lower than average in poorer areas. However, the great majority of such studies have concentrated on elections between 1979 and 1997, a prolonged period of one-party rule. This article argues that this means existing research cannot differentiate between the very different predictions of positional and valence approaches to economic voting since both suggest identical outcomes during Conservative administrations. By contrasting a period of Conservative rule with a period of Labour rule, however, the article provides a test of the competing claims of the positional and valence arguments for an understanding of Britain's electoral geography.