News - BES Findings
Is Nigel Farage a Threat to Labour?
Jon Mellon and Geoffrey Evans Nigel Farage’s Brexit party has had a very volatile start. The party went from nothing to winning the European Parliament elections in a matter of months, and has now fallen back to more modest levels after Boris Johnson became Prime…
Labour’s electoral dilemma
In our forthcoming book Electoral Shocks we show that how political parties respond to major political events is crucial to how those shocks affect voters’ choices and volatility, and ultimately which parties win and which parties lose. The Brexit shock is the biggest shock in…
New Class Divides in British Politics
Occupational class was once the fundamental structure behind the British party system, with the vast majority of the working class supporting Labour and the vast majority of the middle class supporting the Conservatives. This link frayed in the 2000s under the New Labour government and…
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Is any Brexit Deal Possible...
The current withdrawal agreement agreed by Theresa May – the deal that is currently the only one on offer from the EU – is very unpopular. Unsurprisingly, only 5% of Remainers consider it to be a good or very good deal (in newly released BES…
Youthquake – a reply to our critics
In the wake of the release of the 2017 BES face-to-face data, and our analysis that showed no evidence of a surge in youth turnout at the 2017 election, some commentators have challenged our findings. The key message of our original article (published on…
Women, men, and the 2017 general election. By Jane Green and Chris...
With the forthcoming centenary of the Representation of the People’s Act 1918, it is timely to ask whether women are equally engaged in voting, whether they vote differently to men, and how this might have played out in the most recent general election in June…
The myth of the 2017 youthquake election
By Chris Prosser, Ed Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Jonathan Mellon, and Geoff Evans In the wake of the surprise outcome of the 2017 election people began to look for an explanation for Labour’s unexpectedly good performance. One explanation quickly became prominent: Jeremy Corbyn had mobilised previously…
Swings and roundabouts: the potential electoral consequences of Labour’s position on Europe.
In light of previous BES research which demonstrated how Labour relied on the Remain vote at the 2017 general election, it is not surprising that many regarded Labour’s rethinking on transitional arrangements for leaving the EU as electorally opportunistic. But how much difference might we…
Did people vote for Jeremy Corbyn because they thought he would lose?
By Jon Mellon and Chris Prosser In the run up to the election, many commentators and even some MPs suggested that people might vote labour despite Jeremy Corbyn and not because of him. People could do this, the argument went, because they could be safe…
What was it all about? The 2017 election campaign in voters’ own...
The 2017 election campaign was the most remarkable in recent British political history. As the dust settles on the election, many politicians and commentators have put their spin on why the campaign saw such dramatic changes in vote intentions. But what did the voters themselves…