News - BES Findings
What the 2015 Polling Miss Can Tell us About the Trump Surprise
By Jon Mellon and Chris Prosser Tuesday night saw an eerily familiar feeling setting in as it became increasingly clear that the conventional wisdom driven by public polling had greatly miscalculated Trump’s chances just as it had with the UK Conservative party in 2015 and the…
Brexit Britain: British Election Study Insights from the post-EU Referendum wave of...
We are pleased to release new British Election Study insights into the Brexit vote. In this blog we explore some of the deeper features of a nation divided by support for Leave or Remain. These divisions help us to understand the routes to Brexit and…
What mattered most to you when deciding how to vote in the...
We expect election campaigns to follow the major concerns of voters. We also expect campaigns to focus on those issues considered strongest for each respective side. But what did voters think were the most important things when deciding how to vote in the EU referendum?…
Are Leave Voters Mainly UKIP? by Jonathan Mellon and Geoffrey Evans
The leave campaign’s surprise win in the EU referendum has led many people to look for explanations for its success and how it managed to perform so much better than UKIP, the party that pushed hardest for Brexit. At first glance, it may seem obvious…
BES and the EU referendum result on ITV
The British Election Study has served the social science community since 1964, and will continue to provide a public resource for understanding the political upheaval our country is experiencing. On Thursday night, using the British Election Study, we called the result of the EU referendum…
The ITV referendum team
Following the tumultuous events of referendum night, here’s a group photo of the ITV news team, with Manchester’s Professor Jane Green, who followed the twists and turns of the night’s events. Professor Green, who is one of the nation’s leading political scientists and a co-director…
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…