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Release! Updated 2015 General Election Results File

The British Election Study Team
07/08/2015

Today we are releasing an updated version of our 2015 General Election results file (version 2.0). The file comprises the 2015 election results for each constituency (winning party, vote share, number of votes, turnout, majority and changes in vote share since 2010), the 2010 results (winning party, vote share, number of votes, turnout and majority), and 2015 candidate and constituency data.

Previous versions of the results file used the BBC’s results database. Version 2.0 now uses data from the Electoral Commission’s verified results file. The 2010 results are taken from Pippa Norris’s 2010 results file.

The most important change to note is that the size of the electorate (which was previously based on pre-election reporting and estimates) has changed for most constituencies. Details of these and other changes to the data from previously released versions can be found here: BES 2015 General Election results file v2.0 change log

As with previous versions, the results file includes contextual information at the constituency level:

The names, sex, and ethnicity of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, UKIP, Green Party, Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. This information is provided by Dr Jennifer vanHeerde-Hudson of the Representative Audit of Britain.

2011 Census information on total population, population density, and the proportion of the resident population falling into different categories of gender, age, household type, housing tenure, ethnicity, country of birth, passports held, English (or Welsh in Wales) spoken as a main language, religion, National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SeC), Economic activity, industrial sector, qualifications, health, and deprivation. Census information is taken from the House of Commons Library Census 2011 Constituency results.

Note that because the Scottish census is carried out separate to the census in England and Wales not all census information is available for Scottish constituencies.

The results file can easily be merged with our survey data by matching observations on the ‘pano’ (Press Association Constituency ID) variable.

This link takes you to the dataset in spss and stata formats.

You can also download the updated excel file here: BES 2015 General Election results file v2.0