Changing boundaries shouldn’t change election results For the past 30 years, political scientists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have been investigating how new boundaries will impact the political makeup of Parliament. Whenever new constituency maps are designed, they estimate what the... Posted 16 Jan 2024
The UK’s shortest serving PM hands out peerages to friends and supporters In the days between Christmas and New Year, the government tried to quietly slip out some bad news – it hoped many people would be too distracted by remnant cheeseboards and left-over Turkey to notice... Posted 02 Jan 2024
The Non-Battleground Election: Millions of voters are ignored Last week, the Labour Party started the process of selecting their general election candidates for 211 ‘non-battleground’ constituencies in England. The description of these seats as being ‘non-battleground’ is telling, implying that Labour will not... Posted 18 Dec 2023
The top 5 most-read ERS articles from 2023 Every year we have a look through the stats to see which of our articles were the most popular with readers in the year coming to a close. So if you missed them the first... Posted 14 Dec 2023
Fewer than one-in-four support prime ministers handing out peerages to parachute people into cabinet Our recent polling, covered by the Daily Mirror, has found that fewer than one-in-four individuals think it is acceptable for prime ministers to appoint peers to the House of Lords so they can parachute them... Posted 12 Dec 2023
Government report can’t say if voter ID made any difference to problem it was supposed to solve The government has published its evaluation of the Elections Act changes, including the voter ID requirement, used for the first time in the English local elections in May. Back in September, three separate independent reports... Posted 08 Dec 2023
Powys and Gwynedd lead the way for Welsh councils with consultation votes There was fantastic news for voters coming out of Powys and Gwynedd today, as their County Councils have voted YES to public consultations on scrapping First Past the Post for their elections and bringing in... Posted 07 Dec 2023
Strong government vs good government? First Past the Post means our governments will always fail to deliver Government failures are always in the news, but we rarely question why it is that our governments often seem so wholly incapable of delivering on their objectives. It’s easy to point at individual ministers and... Posted 30 Nov 2023
New political funding rules sneak in When people are asked about the problems with money in politics, few raise the issue of there not being enough. In fact, the public are deeply concerned about big money in politics with the majority... Posted 24 Nov 2023
Voters prefer decisions made by panels balanced between men and women Men still dominate political decision-making in the United Kingdom. Women hold just one or two seats on prestigious select committees in the House of Commons, like Defence, Foreign Affairs, and Justice. No women sit on... Posted 21 Nov 2023