Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This is a qualitative data collection. The Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QESB) 2015 seeks to capture the complexities of why people vote the way they do. The project involved qualitative research in the form of 23 focus groups during and after the 2015 UK general election to investigate what Britons think about elections, campaigns and politics described in their own words. The focus groups were held in England (Birmingham, Clacton, and Colchester), Wales (Cardiff) and Scotland (Dundee and Glasgow). The project seeks to encourage the creation and use of qualitative research like the QESB within and outside academia. 94 eligible voters were recruited in advance of the election to discuss the campaign, the leadership debates and important campaign issues. They were invited back to the post-election focus groups to discuss the election outcome. The transcriptions of these focus groups, the audio and video recordings, and the documents filled in by the participants constitute the QESB 2015 qualitative dataset. Along with the earlier QESB 2010 study (available under SN 6861) and the 2014 Referendum Study datasets (forthcoming), this is the first qualitative dataset that explores questions on elections and voting behaviour over 3 consecutive elections in Britain. The data are freely available to the general public via the QESB website and the UK Data Archive.

Main Topics:

Popular perceptions of parties and party leaders, reasoning behind vote preference and vote choice, evaluations of leaders’ debates and referenda, assessment of electoral practices, consumption of media and evaluations of the election campaign.

Purposive selection/case studies

Face-to-face focus group