The “Beeching Axe” and electoral support in Britain
利用英国1964年大选前夕数千火车站关闭的自然实验，通过统计方法证明政策实施不受党派影响，并发现该关闭显著改变了保守党的选票支持，最终导致执政13年的政府败选。
Policy implementation has important electoral effects, but there is often a problem in determining if policy changes drive electoral behaviour or if the process works in reverse. To address this issue we exploit a unique natural experiment in Britain: the closure of thousands of train stations, known as the Beeching Cuts, on the eve of General Election of 1964. We use several statistical methods to show that policy implementation was unaffected by partisan considerations and therefore it can be regarded as an exogenous intervention. An individual-level model of voting intentions from the first British Election Study conducted in 1963, and an aggregate model of party vote shares in the General Election of 1964 show that the closures significantly changed voting support for the Conservative party. The 1964 election was very competitive and the closures clearly contributed to the defeat of the incumbent government after 13 years of uninterrupted rule.