Thatcher’s Legacy Still Looms Large: The North-South divide in Britain’s electoral support
During the 1980s Britain witnessed an unprecedented geographical polarisation of voting behaviour and political attitudes. The term North-South divide became popular parlance, not just in the field of economics but also in British politics, as ‘the North’ – defined approximately by an imaginary line from…
Turnout in the European Parliament election: Why do so many people abstain?
Evidence from British Election Study Internet Panel Wave One conducted in Feb/March 2014 There is a bit of a clash between different explanations of the particularly low level of participation in European Parliament elections. Some say it’s all due to Euro-Scepticism: those who are critical about…
New BES data available
New data from the British Election Study are now available. The data are based on an online sample of over 20,000 people surveyed between 20th February and 9th March 2014. More information about the first survey can be found here. The BES is one of the longest…
UKIP support in the European Parliament election set to translate to the...
The UK Independence Party tends to poll significantly better in European Parliament elections than it does in Westminster general elections. A good result for UKIP in the European Parliament elections is a blow for the three major parties, but the major parties traditionally take comfort…
2015 British Election Study Internet Panel Study Wave 2 and Combined Wave...
The British Election Study is pleased to announce the release of the second wave of the Internet Panel. In total, 30,219 respondents took this survey, 26,870 of these also took wave 1. We are also pleased to release the first combined panel study file of…
British Election Study plans presented at London School of Economics
Professor Jane Green presented plans of the new 2015 British Election Study in a seminar held by British Government@LSE, on 11 September 2013. The seminar was organised by Professor Tony Travers and Professor Simon Hix. Jane’s slides can be downloaded here: LSE slides
2015 BES innovations discussed in Montreal
Professor Ed Fieldhouse presented new innovations in the 2015 British Election Study at a workshop of election specialists hosted by Professor Andre Blais (University of Montreal) in March 2014. Ed highlighted innovations in the 2015 BES: User experiments and proposals (‘playground’ items e.g. certainty scales)…
British Election Study Advisory Board
The British Election Study international Advisory Board includes scholars with considerable experience in running election studies and represents scholars with expertise in Welsh and Scottish politics in the UK. These international and national insights are particularly important given the BES’ focus on international excellence, comparison…
British Election Study on BBC Breakfast News
Professor Jane Green, Co-Investigator on the British Election Study, was interviewed by Charlie Stayt and Louise Minchin on BBC Breakfast News following the second leadership debate between Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. Asked whether she was surprised that…
Analysing Social Media Communication
Members of the BES Scientific Leadership Team participated in a workshop at the MZES, University of Mannheim, March 28-29, 2014. Twitter and Facebook are now widely used forums of social communication. Many people use them for all sorts of purposes, among them the collection of…