The scourge of tactical voting A fifth of voters feel unable to back the party they most support this election, according to polling for the ERS. It’s more than twice the number as in 2015. This is a situation foisted... Posted 07 Jun 2017
Closing the registration generation gap Young voters are in the spotlight this election. Significant gaps in current polling have been explained by differences in how pollsters are measuring youth turnout. Younger electors are also behind the surge in electoral registration.... Posted 06 Jun 2017
Online campaigning is a wild west – it’s time we knew what parties were up to If 2015 was the digital election, this one is more specifically the Facebook election. With the big money rolling into the social media giant from parties – Labour and the Conservatives are planning to spend a million pounds... Posted 30 May 2017
Diversity deserts: 7.5m people can’t vote for a woman this election There’s good news and bad news when it comes to women’s representation this election. The good news is this: analysis by the Press Association suggests a record number of women could be elected on June 8th, meaning... Posted 26 May 2017
The Conservatives just pledged to take our democracy back decades Yesterday Theresa May launched the Conservatives’ manifesto. There was a lot of talk about ‘moving forwards’. But one pledge stuck out as doing the exact opposite. Theresa May has pledged to impose (or in the manifesto’s... Posted 19 May 2017
The drop in attainers on the electoral roll should worry us all With a week to go before the cut off for registering to vote for the general election on June 8th, our research has shown that the proportion of school leavers on the electoral roll dropped... Posted 17 May 2017
‘Progressive alliances’ shouldn’t be necessary: they’re product of a broken voting system There’s a lot of talk about June 8th being the ‘tactical voting’ election. This past couple of weeks we’ve seen the latest symptom: parties doing the tactical voting on behalf of the electorate – weeks before... Posted 08 May 2017
The next government must extend votes at 16 beyond Scotland You might not have realised, but on Thursday, thousands of 16 and 17 year olds trekked to polling stations across the country to exercise their democratic right to vote. They went with the full support... Posted 05 May 2017
Where are the women in May’s local election? Since the Prime Minister’s unexpected announcement of a General Election last week there’s been little time to talk of anything else. Our 24 hour news cycle is now dominated by images of May, Corbyn et... Posted 27 Apr 2017
Deadline Day: Our Voter Registration System Needs An Overhaul On the evening of the 7th June last year – just a couple of weeks before the EU referendum – the website to register to vote crashed. Cue havoc, thousands of disappointed and angry people, and... Posted 13 Apr 2017