News
The New Face Of British Class Voting, by Jonathan Mellon and Geoffrey...
The British Election Study is releasing data on the occupational position of respondents of the 2015 face-to-face post-election survey. Respondents’ open ended respondents were coded to standardized occupational codes, which are then coded into social class positions. We manually coded all British Election Study face-to-face…
What do the 2016 local elections tell us about what might happen...
On Thursday May 5th elections for local and devolved governments took place across the UK. For the main British political parties, each part of the country told a slightly different story. In Scotland it was a bad night for Labour, who slipped to third place…
When attitudes and behaviour collide: how a referendum can upset the party...
By Ed Fieldhouse and Chris Prosser Imagine the following scenario: a referendum in which the major political parties and establishment are arguing in favour of the status quo, against a growing but enthusiastic minority who argue in favour of breaking away from the union and…
Don’t blame young voters: new film from ‘UK in a Changing Europe’
The UK in a Changing Europe programme, which is injecting research based information into the referendum debate, has produced a video for younger people which we feature below. Professor Anand Menon, who leads the progamme, says the decision matters to young people in particular, who…
How we’re (almost) all swingers now
For many decades, political parties have competed furiously for the great prize of British Politics: the affections of the swing voter. It wasn’t that long ago when there were relatively few political swingers: until the 1990s, General Election results really would be won by attracting…
2015 and Social Media: New iBES data released! By Rachel Gibson and...
The BES team are pleased to announce the first stage data release from the internet module of the 2015 British Election Study (iBES). This release consists of a daily tracking file compiled by Crimson Hexagon[1] over the course of the campaign. Tweets from the ‘Firehose’…
BES Vote Validation Variable added to Face to Face Post-Election Survey
It may be a truism to say that elections are decided by those who turn out to vote but from the impact of local campaigns, to understanding why the polls went wrong, knowing who votes and who doesn’t is key to understanding British elections. The…
Missing Non-Voters and Misweighted Samples: Understanding the Great British Polling Miss
By Jon Mellon and Chris Prosser On Tuesday the inquiry into why the polls went wrong before 2015 election released its preliminary findings. Their main finding agrees with our own research: unrepresentative samples are to blame for the 2015 polling miss. However, inaccurate polling due…
PhD Studentship with the British Election Study and the Hansard Society: Investigating...
We are recruiting an outstanding student to undertake PhD research with the British Election Study (Professors Jane Green and Edward Fieldhouse) and the Hansard Society (Dr Ruth Fox), to analyse the factors governing the perceived problem of representation in politics. The student will use British…
The BES’ Jane Green is ‘Research Communicator of the Year’
One of the nation’s top political studies awards has gone to Professor Jane Green, co-Director of the British Election study. The University of Manchester based academic received the Political Studies Association Research Communicator Award 2015 accolade at a plush ceremony in London on Tuesday night…