Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. 

This dataset comprises data from Waves 1 and 2 of the BES 2001 panel study, part of the first 'main component' of the BES. A third wave of the panel study was conducted in May 2002, but the data from this is not yet included in the UKDA dataset.

Main Topics:

The following subjects were covered in the survey: political preferences and values, economic perceptions, social attitudes, dispositions to engage in different forms of political activity, individual and household socio-demographic characteristics. Constituency-level information for aggregate analysis is also included in the data file. This covers election results for 2001, percentage of votes for each party, 'swing' between parties, changes in vote and turnout since 1997, demographic characteristics of each of the major party candidates, election results for 1997 and 1992, and characteristics of the area (including levels of home ownership, ethnicity, economic activity, age of population and Socio-Economic Group (SEG) classifications of households in the area).

Multi-stage stratified random sample

for full details of sampling procedures, please see documentation.

Face-to-face interview

Self-completion