Despite agreement on the importance of class in voting behavior, scholars have not integrated research on class-based political behavior with broader theories about the sources of group cohesion in a mass electorate. This article explores the potential for political cohesion among a variety of occupational groups within the British working class. The propensity for collective action in the electoral arena is evaluated in terms of each group's social situation—its differentiation, level of within-group interaction, need for collective effort, and organizational capacity. Using the 1891 population census and general election results from 1885 to 1910, we then observe the relationship between the spatial concentration of each occupational group and the left-wing vote. The results indicate clearly that alternate conceptions of stratification are associated with different directions of class-party relationships and different levels of class-based voting. The results of both correlation and multivariate regression analysis confirm that the level of class voting increased as the definition of “working class” was narrowed to identify groups with a high potential for collective action. As the scope of the independent variable was narrowed, the relationship more closely conformed to that predicted in the literature on class and politics. This suggests the wisdom of Kornhauser's admonition to analyze the social basis of voting “within a structure of explicit theory about class relations as dynamic functioning processes.”
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