Modelling the dynamics of support for a right-wing populist party: the case of UKIP

Similar to a number of other right-wing populist parties in Europe, Great Britain's United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has experienced increased public support in recent years. Using aggregate data from monthly national surveys conducted between April 2004 and April 2014, time series analyses demonstrate that the dynamics of UKIP support were influenced by a combination of spatial and valence issues. A spatial issue, Euroscepticism, was fundamental, with UKIP support moving in dynamic equilibrium with changing public attitudes towards EU membership. In addition, widespread anti-immigration sentiment and dissatisfaction with the performance of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government combined with the “oxygen of publicity” to propel UKIP's surge. The political context after the 2010 general election helped as well by enabling UKIP to benefit from valence considerations. Many voters continued to doubt the competence of the major opposition party, Labour, while the Liberal Democrats were part of the government and, hence, unavailable as a protest vehicle. Since many of the forces driving UKIP support are beyond its control, the party's prospects are highly uncertain.     

Murder, Nonnegligent Manslaughter, and Spatial Autocorrelation in Mid-South Counties

In this paper we explore to what extent county murder and nonnegligentmanslaughter rates in the midsouth are spatially autocorrelated, usinga variety of spatial autocorrelation tests. The data are 3-year averages ofUCR murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rates from the 383 midsouthcounties. Moran's I statistics show a statistically significant amountof spatial autocorrelation in the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter ratesamong the 383 midsouth counties. G statistics, however, fail to detect aglobal pattern in this region. We also compute G_i statistics and localMoran's I statistics with these data and detect some patterns oflocalized spatial autocorrelation. We estimated and compared an MLE spatiallag model and an OLS model with constructs informed by socialdisorganization theory. The regression analysis failed to detect anysignificant spatial effects for the midsouth counties.