Over one million people at risk of not having voter ID on election day New figures show that there have been only 57,000 new applications for Voter Authority Certificates (VACs) meaning over a million voters risk not having an accepted form of ID on July 4th. Voting is a fundamental... Posted 01 Jul 2024
What does a super-majority mean and is it something we should worry about? In the last week, the current defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has been appearing in the news to warn about the supposed dangers of a Labour ‘super-majority’. He told Times Radio “You don’t want to have... Posted 18 Jun 2024
Lessons not Learnt: New report on 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections The last nine years have witnessed three general elections, a nationwide referendum and no less than five prime ministers. At times our politics has felt chaotic, and the output of the Westminster electoral system has... Posted 23 Jan 2024
One year on from the General Election: What we’ve learnt about Westminster’s warped voting system A year ago this Saturday, the polls opened on the first December election for over ninety years. At the time this felt like an unusual bookend to an unusual parliamentary term, which had culminated in... Posted 11 Dec 2020
New research: Comparing rates of electoral assent in the recent Irish and UK general elections Luke Field is an Irish political scientist specialising in campaigns, elections, and democracy. He recently completed a Ph.D. in Political Science at University College Dublin and lectures in Politics at University College Cork. He tweets... Posted 26 Mar 2020
2019 General Election Results In an election campaign characterised by uncertainty and volatility, it came as a surprise to many that the result would deliver such a decisive majority for one party. The Conservative Party made a net gain... Posted 19 Mar 2020
Little evidence to suggest that electoral pacts had ‘material impact on the result’ Last week I wrote about tactical voting at the 2019 General Election, after the ERS revealed that almost a third of voters did not feel they were able to vote for the party they actually... Posted 11 Mar 2020
Unpicking the ‘People’s Parliament’: Here’s how many votes went ignored in your region Last week we revealed how many votes went ignored in December’s general election: 22.6m ballots did not count towards electing an MP. But behind the headline figures are people’s voices across the country being systematically... Posted 09 Mar 2020
Ignored and unrepresented: Report reveals how Westminster’s electoral system continues to fail voters Something is deeply wrong when over 70% of votes count for nothing. That’s what Westminster’s voting system did in December’s election, according to a damning new analysis from the ERS. Of 32 million votes cast,... Posted 02 Mar 2020
Voters Left Voiceless – The 2019 General Election For all the talk of December’s poll as a ‘People versus Parliament’ election, it looks like neither won. 22.6 million. That’s the number of votes that didn’t count towards the result in December’s General Election,... Posted 02 Mar 2020