Democratizing the franchise decimated the British Liberal Party’s vote share

Evidence

The name “Liberal” was first adopted for the Whig Party by Gladstone in 1868, in which year the party won 61.5 percent of the vote. As the electorate extended to all male and female adults, a process completed only in 1928, so its share of the vote declined. In 1935, polling slightly above its numbers in 1868, it won 6.7 percent of the vote. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 428

Categorization

• QUESTION: This suggests a structural causal link between franchise expansion and Liberal decline — worth probing whether the mechanism was class-based politics or something else.
• XREF: Connects to the later chapter treatments of working-class politics and the rise of Labour.