Welcome to the official British Election Study (BES) website.
You can find out everything you need to know about the BES and gain access to both new and historical BES data. Data can be downloaded and analysed live online via the BES Data Playground. You can also meet the team, see our recent work, or learn more about the impact of the British Election Study.
Research themes
In 2024, the 60th year of the British Election Study, we continue to field the long-running post-election face-to-face study. In addition, we will continue the internet panel study with waves covering the May 2024 local elections, and the 2024/5 UK general election. The general election waves of the panel study will feature a pre-election, campaign, and post-election wave.
The 2019-26 BES Study is themed Voters and the British Political System in the Context of Brexit and is designed to help our understanding of the interaction of long-term political change and political shocks in shaping citizens’ attitudes and behaviour.
Study components
- An address-based random probability sample survey conducted via face-to-face interviews for maximum representativeness, geographic variation and long-run comparability.
- An internet panel survey that began in 2014, and has covered the Scottish independence referendum, 2014 European Parliament Election, 2015 General Election, 2016 EU referendum, 2017 General Election, 2019 European Parliament Election and 2019 General Election.
- A range of survey-experiments embedded within the panel study itself.
- A daily ‘rolling thunder’ campaign study of voters, to allow analysis of shorter-term campaign effects to provide important contextual information on the campaign.
- The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems module in the post-election survey to enable international comparison.
- A program of data linkage and harmonisation with related studies and data collected for administrative purposes, developing an integrated data infrastructure for the study of elections in Britain.
Past activities
Professor Jane Green presented at the UKiCE Conference on Brexit ‘realignment’ and implications for the next UK general election.
Watch our 2015 film, The British Election Study: Understanding British Democracy, featuring two of the nation’s leading journalists Michael Crick and Alastair Stewart. They describe how British politics has never been so unpredictable, with important questions facing the electorate. It outlines how the BES is able to help the public grapple with issues like the uncertainties of coalition politics, distrust of politicians, declining party membership and voter turnout. The film is funded by the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester, with other contributions from the BES leadership team based at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.
The British Election Study is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
The Scientific Leadership Team is a consortium of the Universities of Manchester, Nuffield College (Oxford) and Royal Holloway.