R. J. Johnston and C. J. Pattie, "Feeling Good and Changing One's Mind: A Longitudinal Investigation of Voters' Economic Evaluations and Partisan Choices," Party Politics, 5 (January 1999), 39-54.

First Paragraph:
The importance of voters' economic evaluations to their partisan choices (commonly referred to as the 'feelgood factor') has recently moved to a central place in studies of British electoral behaviour, at both aggregate and individual scales. With regard to the latter, Price and Sanders (1993, 1995) have shown the importance of both retrospective and prospective evaluations of personal and national economic situations to partisan choice in the 1980s and early 1990s, to which Pattie and Johnston (1995, 1997) have added retrospective evaluations of regional economic conditions. 'Pocket-book voting' increasingly dominated electoral decision-making as class dealignment progresses among the country's voters.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Responses to the questions on personal financial situations (% of total in each year)
Table 2: Support for the political parties in each of the four years (% of total in each year)
Table 3: Logistic regression analyses of party support (Exponents for significant regression coefficients at the .05 level)
Table 4: Logistic regression analyses of party support, holding constant support in the preceding year (exponents for significant regression coefficients at the .05 level)
Table 5: Logistic regression analyses of Conservative loyalty and flows of support from the Conservative Party (exponents for significant regression coefficients at the .05 level)

Last Paragraph:
Economic policy is a crucial link between governments and voters and contemporary Britain has seen strong relationships develop between various components of the 'feelgood factor' and support for the governing party. Events in the mid-1990s altered this relationship somewhat, producing an asymmetric reward/punishment pattern: the government was punished by its supporters for its perceived failures but was not also strongly rewarded for its successes by the prospering former supporters of other parties. This stimulated potential campaigning difficulties for an economically successful but mistrusted governing party, which was reflected in the 1997 general election result.