Articles by Doug Cowan

Author:
Doug Cowan, Head of Digital

2017 General Election Results

While Labour achieved a nearly proportional result, getting just over 40 percent of the seats on 40 percent of the vote, the Conservatives took a skewed seat-share, with just under 49 percent of the seats...

Posted 29 Aug 2017

Polling Station

The Return of the Gerrymander

With all the media attention focusing on the upcoming American Presidential Election, it’s easy to forget that it isn’t the only election happening on that day. Voters up and down the country will be voting...

Posted 30 Oct 2016

Electoral Reform in Parliament again

Two of our issues are back in the House of Commons this week as Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, will be presenting her ‘Electoral Reform (Proportional Representation and Reduction of Voting...

Posted 18 Aug 2016

David Cameron’s Farewell Gift

Now that David Cameron has moved out of Number 10, the staggering bill he has left behind is starting to become apparent. Since 2010, he has appointed 205 new life peers to the House of...

Posted 08 Aug 2016

House of Lords

How do Conservative Party leadership elections work?

(Updated for October 2024) Historically there weren’t elections for the leader of the Conservative party, but, following the machinations surrounding the appointment of Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963, elections among the MPs were brought in,...

Posted 05 Jul 2016

Tories don’t use First Past the Post to elect their leader. It’s one rule for us and one for them

Costly cronies of the House of Lords

In our new report, House of Lords Fact vs Fiction, we took a look at some of the enduring myths that surround our unelected second chamber. Peers are technically unpaid, but unlike the thousands of people...

Posted 24 Aug 2015

House of Lords

2015 General Election Results

Votes for the two largest parties came to just 67.3% combined, with 36.9% of the electorate voting Conservative and 30.4% voting Labour. The number of votes cast for parties other than the Conservatives, Labour or...

Posted 19 Jul 2015

Polling Station Car Park

Did Proportional Representation put the Nazis in power?

Probably the first time many of us heard of Proportional Representation (PR) was in a school classroom studying the Second World War.  For some people this may have been the last time they heard about other voting...

Posted 05 Jun 2015

Military defeat, revolutions and regular coup attempts played a major role