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
Britain’s campaign laws leave our elections open to fake news and manipulation December’s election was the third Westminster election in four years. Each one of those has highlighted a growing crisis facing the UK’s electoral politics. In an article published by The Guardian, Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower Brittany... Posted 29 Jan 2020
Westminster’s voting system puts tactics above policies Chelsea Oware reflects on the research undertaken during her university placement at the ERS. General elections are prime fodder for news outlets, who tend to focus on the ‘horse race’ between the two main parties,... Posted 19 Dec 2019