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This paper examines the state of the art of the Brexit negotiations in the area of financial services. It uses a two‐level game model to first explain the positions of UK and EU negotiators on the basis of the domestic constraints they face, and second, to consider the scope for final agreement based on the 'win‐set' of both sides. The paper analyses the preferences and power of three main groups of players within the UK and EU: the political authorities, financial regulators, and the financial industry. We argue that the scope for agreement on financial services has been severely hampered by political and regulatory constraints which forced UK and EU negotiators to adopt early hawkish negotiating positions, and by the absence of a unified position from the financial industry. After the 2017 general election, the position of the UK government and UK financial industry briefly converged, thereby narrowing the domestic win‐set, but also increasing the scope for agreement. However, the July 2018 'Chequers' deal represents a hardening of the UK government's position on financial services. We argue that this reflects the fact that the twin pressures facing UK negotiators—acute political constraints at home and bargaining weakness in Brussels—has become more, not less, acute over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests that as public opinion towards immigration becomes more negative, so the descriptive representation of ethnic minority groups is increasingly restricted. Recently, some initial research into the causal mechanism hinted that this effect is driven by patterns of candidacy. This suggests that political parties are creating an 'ethnic penalty' of their own in the selection stage. This paper investigates the relationship between patterns of candidacy, party strategy, and public opinion in Great Britain from 1997 to 2019, and proposes that 'punitive parties' are strongly responsible for shaping the representational outcomes of minority groups. I find support for earlier suggestions that parties are increasingly likely to place ethnic minority candidates away from 'winnable' contests as anti-immigrant hostility rises. These findings are important for our conceptions of ethnic penalties, of party behaviour in selection processes, and for the study and cause of improving political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the voting motivations of Conservative parliamentarians in the final ballot of the Conservative Party leadership election of 1997. Conservative parliamentarians had a clear choice between the political characteristics and the ideological disposition of the candidates. Should they endorse a senior, experienced and electorally attractive candidate, Kenneth Clarke, or a junior, inexperienced and less electorally attractive candidate, William Hague? and should they endorse the socially liberal, economic damp, and Europhile Clarke or the socially conservative, economic and Eurosceptic Hague? By constructing a data set of the voting behaviour of Conservative parliamentarians in the final party leadership ballot, this paper seeks, through the use of bivariate analysis, to test a series of hypotheses relating to the political characteristics and ideological disposition of the candidates vis-à-vis their electorate. The paper demonstrates that attitudes to the European ideological divide alone do not fully explain the rejection of Clarke and the endorsement of Hague. The paper concludes that ideological disposition was a key determinant of voting behaviour across all three of the ideological determinants of post-Thatcherite Conservatism (i.e. the social, sexual and morality policy divide, the economic policy divide and the European policy divide). Moreover, it confirms that ideology was not the sole determinant of voting behaviour; the political characteristics of age and parliamentary experience were significant in explaining how a youthful, inexperienced, Thatcherite Eurosceptic secured the party leadership.British Politics (2008) 3, 63–91. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bp.4200079 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political cartoon became a settled part of the British daily press early in the twentieth century. The cartoon is an editorial in pictures, working with a traditional armoury of images and often including caricature and humour. Cartoonists typically enjoy high status and long tenure. Using the resources of the University of Kent Cartoon Centre database, this article analyses the depiction of party leaders in the 1997 general election and categorises the dominant images employed. The future of this cartoon tradition is explored in the light of changes in the size and design of newspapers and the development of television. Increasingly cartoonists thrive in the broadsheet papers more than the tabloids. The impact of a changing political culture is illustrated by Steve Bell's underpants motif in cartoons of John Major, and by tracing the growth of uninhibited cartoon treatment of royalty. The cartoon's unique ability to convey the unsayable through graphic images ensures that it will continue to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the Conservative election victory on June 9, 1983 in Great Britain has added weight to the Government's White Paper on cable development which was jointly drafted by the Home Office and the Department of Industry. Since then, the Radio Regulatory Department of the Home Office has been transferred, lock, stock and barrel, to the Department of industry, an early indication that industrial reasons for the promotion of cable technology may prevail in government thinking over calculations of possible cultural consequences. The entire subject is an amalgam of ideological premises with constantly accelerating technical innovation, differing engineering expertise, national aspirations for a place in the sun, show business calculations, industrial policy, broadcasting policy, and public incomprehension on difference.

This paper uses a case study of Facebook to examine the potential use of social networking sites (SNS) for political advantage. Drawing upon contemporary surveillance studies and information technology approaches, it aims to provide insights from these for the study of British politics. The paper uses a model of a constituency election to show the ease and effects of SNS data-mining in support of political campaigning. In doing so, it examines the political implications of machine readable personal data, the design of information systems, and the problems of inductive heuristics and social sorting.British Politics (2009) 4, 265–281. doi:10.1057/bp.2009.3 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the age of twenty-three until his death at the age of sixty-eight, Lord Acton was or sought to be a member of the United Kingdom parliament. Although Acton remains a subject of scholar!y interest, his political career has received relatively little attention. This article examines Acton's search for an Irish parliamentary seat, a search which was twice unsuccessful in 1857, but which resulted in May 1859 in Acton's return as the member for Carlow borough. Although Acton was pushed towards parliament by his family - and particularly his stepfather, Lord Granville - a close examination of Acton's campaigns reveals more dedication to a political career than has previously been accepted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper builds upon a content analysis of all news articles that appeared in six national daily newspapers and of all national press releases issued by the three main political parties during the UK General Election 2001 campaign. The results were compared with data from two opinion polls conducted at the start and at the end of the campaign. Here, using the same basic data, we track the coverage of issues in party press releases and daily newspapers on a weekly basis to determine how the parties' priorities and press coverage evolved. • The results show that the Labour and Liberal Democrat campaign strategies, in terms of relative issue priorities, did not change during the campaign. However, the Conservatives shifted their attention to the public priorities of Health and Education towards the end of the campaign. There is evidence that the Conservative emphasis on Europe and taxation earlier in the campaign may have influenced the volume of press coverage but did not appear to have affected relative party standings. The implications of these results for political marketers are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the results of a review of the housing content of UK General Election 2001 manifestos. Housing policy was of little importance during the election campaign. The main British political parties had, essentially, a shared housing agenda—to promote and facilitate home ownership, support area and community regeneration, tackle homelessness, improve the private rented sector, and prevent building on greenfield sites. Many issues of importance to housing specialists received little or no attention, most notably that of low demand. Some policy variations within the UK were evident, for example in attitudes towards greenfield development, home ownership and stock transfer. The paper concludes that differences in housing policy are emerging within the UK as part of a new politics of devolution and that the days of a single housing policy approach for the UK are over. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After identifying the paucity of positioning research relating to political marketing the construct is defined and practical examples of its application in politics provided. The analysis of the 2005 election starts by considering the long term framing of political issues and concludes that this, overall, provided Labour with a competitive advantage. Next the positioning dilemmas facing the three national parties in British politics at the start of the campaign are highlighted. Using a basic positioning model, the positioning strategies followed during the campaign itself are then discussed, both in terms of policies and image/emotional positioning approaches. The attempts by the opposition parties to reposition Labour and the latter's defensive reactions are discussed at this point. Then, the way the wider positioning of the parties was targeted at electoral segments is considered. The paper concludes with an attempt to explain the election result in terms of the relative success or failure of the positioning strategies adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed electoral systems seek to combine elements from different voting methods so as to maximise the numbers of individually accountable constituency MPs, while achieving more proportional outcomes in terms of parties' representation. This paper looks in detail at two kinds of mixed systems: variants of the Additional Member System; and AV Plus (or SV Plus). We examine how they would have operated in British conditions during the 1990s-how ballot papers would be structured, how voters respond to them and what electoral outcomes would have resulted. Both approaches offer good prospects for achieving a consensus amongst electoral reformers on an alternative to first-past-the-post elections. We also show how the Jenkins Commission's proposals can be located within the broader development of 'British AMS' by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. In addition, we quantify the main impacts of the policy choices which the Commission made in designing the proposed system to be submitted to a referendum. The British case will be a key one for the wider debate in political science about the endogenisation of voting system changes within party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study on economic conditions, class and voter behaviour based on the British general election in 1966. In this paper, a model of qualitative choice is developed in which the perception of the desirability of a given level of national economic performance differs across constituencies depending on their individual attributes. Its purpose is to generalize the earlier model and make the influence on consituency voting patterns of non-class attributes itself dependent on the class composition of the constituency. The attributes considered in this study were the proportion of owner-occupiers of dwellings in the constituency. The model was reformulated to consider the situation where the non-class attributes exerted an influence and enables the prediction of voting patterns for two occupational classes.

This paper outlines several methods for forecasting the next British general election on a daily basis from 20 months prior using opinion polls. It discusses their performance for previous electoral cycles and shows that the two models with the best historical record lead to substantially different predictions for 2015, but they can be averaged. The historical relationship between the polls and the vote suggests that government support rises substantially in the run up to elections, that Conservatives outperform but Labour underperform relative to the polls, and parties generally recover from low points or decline from high ones. Approximate prediction intervals and probabilities for key events are also generated. Despite the Conservatives trailing in the polls by 7 points in early October 2013, the models suggest a substantial Conservative lead at the 2015 election with a 64% chance of being the largest party and 42% chance of an overall majority. The estimated probability of a hung parliament (40%) is instructive for understanding the operation of the electoral system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In May 2012, 10 of England's largest cities, outside London, were required to hold referendums giving citizens the option of introducing a directly-elected mayor. Bristol was the only city to vote in favour of the mayoral model. This paper outlines the main themes that feature in current debates about urban leadership. It presents a framework for understanding place-based leadership and, by drawing on a current researchproject on mayoral governance in Bristol, highlights the existence of very different perceptions of how to improve city leadership and democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers published within the issue including one on the role and character of British government's public inquiries, a study on gender mainstreaming, and another article on party election broadcasts.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of weblogs by political parties in the 2005 general election campaign. It seeks to identify why, why not, and how parties used their weblogs during the election campaign. Design/methodology/approach - The weblogs of the five political parties which had a weblog were assessed, and eight party e-campaigners were interviewed. Findings - The findings contrast with those of studies of the 2004 US presidential campaign where blogs appeared to play a significant campaigning role. Rather, in the UK, party blogs were essentially used as one-way communication channels which added colour to party web sites. As a result, such weblogs may have encouraged visitors to return because of some form of voyeurism, but they were not either effective conversational, campaigning, or promotional tools. Research limitations/implications - The paper is based on a UK general election of an experimental political communication channel. Practical implications - Suggests the key elements required for the effective use of weblogs. Also suggests that individual candidate weblogs may be a more appropriate channel to reach electors than party-controlled weblogs. The motivation for using a weblog seems to be essentially a judgement that it might be worthwhile experimenting with one, However, until there is significant evidence that weblogs can have a tangible effect, it is likely that they will remain merely part of the background to a UK general election campaign. Originality/value - The paper provides a means of judging the value of weblogs within political communication by political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modernisation agenda for local government is based on questionable political assumptions. It has the attributes of a theological concept. This paper examines the concept of modernisation of local government by focusing on three dimensions (1) governance, (2) management and (3) finance. This analysis suggests the modernisation agenda is limited in scope and vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets the British government's failure to achieve better control of the business cycle, not in terms of technical inefficiency, but as a politically rational pursuit of a class of 'floating voters' perceived by it to change their economic priorities according to the variable which is currently 'in crisis'. It then investigates whether this perception is accurate, and finds broadly in the affirmative in spite of a growing salience of inflation over time, on the strength of Gallup poll data from 1953-75. The finding of previous studies that government popularity declines cyclically between elections is interpreted in terms of its greater discretion in matters of economic (and other) policy variables in the mid-term, and the hypothesis is put forward that a more economically informed electorate might ipso facto have less unstable preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the relation between the position of a candidate's name on the ballot list and the number of votes he is likely to receive. The study was based on three types of elections that took place in England. The study showed that positional bias was absent in the British General Elections of 1964 but was significant in the Greater London Council Elections of 1964, 1967 and 1970 and the provincial Local Government elections in May and June 1973.

While the economic changes effected by the British Conservative government in the 1980s are transparent, there is considerable debate as to whether there was a political dimension to the "Thatcher Revolution." This paper argues that the Conservatives were successful in undertaking social structural reforms that effectively moved the political center of gravity in Britain to the right and toward the government's preferred market-oriented policy agenda. The government's strategy-manifest in the sale of council houses to tenants and of shares in privatized corporations to individuals, and its attack on organized labor-was narrowly targeted on the swing electorate among wealthier members of the lower socioeconomic strata. The Labour party has acknowledged the successes of the Conservatives' structural reforms, and has moved its policy platform, in Downsian fashion, to the right in order to regain electoral competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who do you think will win in your constituency? Most citizens correctly answer this question, and groups are even better at answering it. Combining individual forecasts results in the 'wisdom of crowds' explained by Condorcet's jury theorem. This paper demonstrates the accuracy of citizen forecasts in seven British General Elections between 1964 and 2010, and reports what citizens interviewed in February and March forecasted for the election in May 2015. 'Citizen forecasting' predicts vote shares and winners in constituency elections, and seat numbers and governments in national elections. The paper also introduces a new method for predicting vote shares from citizen forecasts. Citizen forecasts are direct, accurate, and comprehensible. Pollsters should collect them and communicate their results more often. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act significantly reduces the powers of the Prime Minister to manage the risk of government termination and to time elections to his or her party's advantage. In this paper we ask how the Act is likely to change the way in which governments terminate, their durability and opportunities for planning in government and departments. In answering these questions we draw on quantitative comparative evidence from other European countries that operate with fixed-term parliaments. Our analysis suggests that fixing the parliamentary term can be expected to convert some opportunistically called elections into regular elections and to stabilise governments toward the end of the parliamentary term. But the Act is also likely to have unanticipated consequences in increasing governments' vulnerability to failure before they reach the final sessions of Parliament. We explore these unanticipated consequences and outline their implications for governing style and Civil Service planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies three marketing approaches to identify a possible framework for analysing the 2010 general election. The first approach to be assessed is transactional, which is the traditional view of political marketing. The second approach is relationship marketing, of which there is some evidence that it has applied to politics. The third approach, experiential, has not yet been applied to the political context. As this is an exploratory research project, the data are collected from one small geographical area, Devon. Interviews were conducted with candidates in the 12 seats in this county to identify which, if any, of these three marketing approaches might apply to UK general elections. The article, argues that a hybrid approach to political marketing, drawing on all three approaches can potentially offer researchers a framework for understanding general election campaigns. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Explanations of party competition and vote choice are commonly based on the Downsian view of politics: parties maximise votes by adopting positions on policy dimensions. However, recent research suggests that British voters choose parties based on evaluations of competence rather than on ideological position. This paper proposes a theoretical account which combines elements of the spatial model with the ‘issue ownership’ approach. Whereas the issue ownership theory has focused mainly on party competition, this paper examines the validity of the model from the perspective of both parties and voters, by testing its application to recent British general elections. Our findings suggest that as parties have converged ideologically, competence considerations have become more important than ideological position in British elections. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The breakdown of the relatively close relationship between Labour and the Liberal Democrats between 2001 and 2005 provides reason to expect that both the incidence and the character of tactical voting would have been different at the 2005 general election as compared with other recent elections. Fewer voters would be expected to have voted tactically overall, and in particular fewer would be expected to have made a tactical switch between the Liberal Democrats and Labour. This paper examines whether those expectations were fulfilled. It finds that the increased hostility between the leaderships of the Labour and the Liberal Democrat parties was not reflected in the attitudes of those parties’ supporters. Nevertheless there does seem to have been some decline in tactical switching from Labour to the Liberal Democrats, engendered perhaps by an apparent decline in hostility towards the Conservatives. Otherwise, however, there is no consistent evidence that the incidence or pattern of tactical voting was different in 2005 from that in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2005 UK general election resulted for the third successive time in the Labour party winning a much larger share of seats in the House of Commons than of the votes cast. Furthermore, with an equal share of the votes the Conservative party would have won 111 seats fewer than Labour. Commentators have used this outcome to criticise aspects of the country’s electoral system. This paper reports a decomposition of the pro-Labour bias in the 2005 result (in the context of the outcome of previous contests), which allows an evaluation of the validity of such criticisms. It shows that most of the bias can be attributed not to the operation of the first-past-the-post electoral system per se but rather to party and voter behaviour within the template provided by that system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2005 General Election, the Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote by 4%, winning 62 seats in Parliament. However, the geography of Liberal Democrat improvement was uneven. In this paper we explore the factors which contributed to this pattern. Two features stand out. First, unlike in recent elections, advances in Liberal Democrat support were neither in their heartlands nor predominantly in areas of local election success. Rather their vote share increased most in university constituencies and in areas with large Muslim populations. We estimate the combination of the education vote and the Muslim vote may have won the party as many as 14 seats. Second there was a change in the relationship with the other major parties. In recent elections the Liberal Democrats had benefited from tactical switching from Labour with whom they had shared an informal anti-Conservative alliance. In 2005 the Liberal Democrats gained support in the Labour heartlands, but struggled to convert the bedrock of Labour support in areas where they were challenging the Conservatives, or even to hold on to support where they were defending seats in the face of a Conservative challenge. Our findings add further credence to the argument that, in a first-past-the-post system, a third party can only advance incrementally, taking advantage of whatever favourable contest and context specific factors prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before World War f religion was a major determinant of voting in Britain. Butler and Stokes have used recent interview surveys, divided into cohorts, to trace the declining effect of religion on British partisanship or at least the present day results of that historic decline. This paper compares their findings with census based analyses of religion and voting at each election from 1918 to 1970 and for each major party. The results confirm and extend the Butler/Stokes conclusions. The Conservatives consistently benefited from the Anglican tradition, Labour consistently did badly in areas of high religiosity. But the Liberals connection with both class and religion varied. Religious effects were large between the wars. They dropped to a low level in 1950-1 and then increased again though not to the interwar level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of the geography of British elections have typically stressed the continuity in patterns of party support. This paper challenges that conclusion. Employing an alternative method of analysis, it identifies significant regional trends in the Conservative and Labour vote between 1950 and 1983. Pro-Labour trends in Scotland and Northwest England are contrasted with secular changes favoring the Conservatives in non-metropolitan Southern England. These long-term trends have not been associated with growing regional polarization in party support. While the findings are specific to Britain, the method of assessing electoral change might be usefully applied to patterns in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy has surrounded the explanation of one of the most striking features of recent British General Elections: the rapidly changing regional geography of the vote. While some analysts have seen this as evidence of the impact of local electoral contexts on voting decisions, others have claimed that apparent regional effects are merely a consequence of poorly specified models. In this paper, new data from the 1992 British Election Study are employed to demonstrate the independent impact of regional economic context upon the vote-switching behaviour of individual British electors between the 1987 and 1992 General Elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No established liberal democracy has achieved sex balance in its national legislature. Scholars agree skewed candidate pools put forward by parties during elections cause sex-disproportionate seat distribution, but disagree as to whether disproportionality is caused by too few women aspirant candidates coming forward (supply) or party selectors preferring men (demand). This paper uses a multistage method to explore supply and demand during the British Labour party's candidate selection process. Rare data from three elections and 4622 aspirants allow for an unobstructed look inside the secret garden of politics and reveal the party is not fully feminized insofar that women aspirants are disproportionally filtered out of its selection process and are disproportionally underrepresented in its candidate pool. Testing reveals a lack of selector demand for women aspirants has a greater impact on women's underrepresentation than an undersupply of women aspirants, a finding which supports using sex quotas to level imbalanced candidate slates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the traditional functions of party members is to campaign on behalf of their party at general elections. However, they are not the only people who volunteer for the job. In the context of the growing literature on ‘multi-speed membership’ parties, it is important to ask what non-members do for parties they support. This paper examines how different actors contributed to the electoral campaigns of six parties at the 2015 UK General Election, using survey data covering not only members of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, United Kingdom Independence, Scottish Nationalist, and Green parties, but also voters who identified themselves as being close to one of those parties but did not formally belong to them. As well as exploring how much work they do during campaigns, we ask whether the two groups choose different activities and are differently motivated. We find that, at the individual level, party members do more than non-member supporters, and that this is especially true of more intensive forms of activity. We also find that constituency context and political attitudes influence levels of activity in similar ways for members and supporters. However, we find no consistent impact from demographic factors or ideological incongruence. At the aggregate level, we estimate that the campaign work done by supporters may match or even exceed that done by party members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a study of the changing nature of the narrative contents and production formats of Party Election Broadcasts (PEBs) produced by the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democratic parties for UK general elections from 1979 to 2010. This analysis tracked production changes that might signal a movement on the part of the political parties toward using marketing-oriented techniques of the kind found in televised advertising. Although PEBs are not technically classified as advertisements by the broadcasting industry, but rather as programs, they nevertheless present an opportunity to political parties to promote themselves and their policies. Using content analysis, it was found that PEBs have grown progressively shorter from 1979 to 2010 and become faster paced. They have become more sophisticated as productions with wider use of dramatized documentary formats rather than talking heads, popular music, and professional performers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whilst most UK political parties have now accepted the need to increase the number of women representatives, the stark reality is that women remain under-represented. The under-representation of women in UK politics is not just evident in the national legislature but is a pattern repeated, to varying degrees, in second order elections at local, devolved and European levels. Recent developments in political recruitment processes allow us to explore the extent to which political parties take advantage of different electoral systems to promote women candidates in second order elections. Providing analysis of (s)election data from across second order elections, this article explores the interaction between systemic and institutional strategies, questioning which combination of electoral system and party strategy is most beneficial for increasing levels of women's representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political history of the parliamentary borough of Ripon between the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Second Reform Act of 1867. It challenges the notion that Ripon remained a 'pocket borough' during this era; rather, the Reform Act rendered Ripon's politics much more open, vibrant and participatory than they had been during the 'unreformed' era. In demonstrating this, the article calls into question the alleged prevalence of 'pocket boroughs' in the reformed era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting an exit poll to forecast the outcome of a national election in terms of both votes and seats is particularly difficult in Britain. No official information is available on how individual polling stations voted in the past, use of single-member plurality means that there is no consistent relationship between votes and seats, electors can choose to vote by post and most of those who vote in person do so late in the day. In addition, around one in every six intended exit poll respondents refuses to participate. Methods that were developed to overcome these problems, and their use in the successful 2005 British Broadcasting Corporation–Independent Television exit poll, are described and evaluated. The methodology included a panel design to allow the estimation of electoral change at local level, coherent multiple-regression modelling of multiparty electoral change to capture systematic patterns of variation, probabilistic prediction of constituency winners to account for uncertainty in projected constituency level shares, collection of information about the voting intentions of postal voters before polling day and access to interviewer guesses on the voting behaviour of refusals. The coverage and accuracy of the exit poll data are critically examined, the effect of key aspects of the statistical modelling of the data is assessed and some general lessons are drawn for the design and analysis of electoral exit polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the political life in late Victorian Great Britain, focusing on Conservatives in Thornbury. Threat to the forces of rural Conservatism; Outcome of general elections; Course of events at each election; Relations between the members of the parliament and the constituency; Methods employed by the Conservative Association.

The 2019 general election gave prominence to tactical voting advice websites, particularly those projecting constituency‐level results using national polling data and sophisticated multi‐level regression and poststratification (MRP) polling models. We see tactical voting as an example of a coordination game and argue that polling‐model driven advice websites are disruptive to the existing focal points for strategic voting. Although such websites may well help identify the strongest candidate based on constituency demographics, the article argues they are unlikely to coalesce support behind that single candidate, a prerequisite for successful tactical voting. In practice, there are multiple competing models and websites as well as other key sources of information to voters. Furthermore, the heuristic of relying on tactical voting websites is vulnerable to strategic action by partisans. In short, it is argued that the emergence of these websites risks muddying the waters further for electors seeking to vote tactically, potentially splitting the tactical vote rather than unifying it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party members are often depicted as loyal voters that supply the party with a small but steady electoral base. Research, however, suggests that party members occasionally vote for other parties in general elections. This might either be a strategic choice or an indication of their discontent, possibly preceding a choice to exit the party. Using original survey data on more than 9000 party members in Flanders (Belgium) and Britain, this article aims to extend our understanding of why party members defect. We test hypotheses that take into account both individual and party-level considerations (ideological concerns, leadership evaluations and strategic choices) and the conditioning effects of party and electoral systems. Our analysis shows that institutional settings are crucial for strategic voting, whereas ideological concerns and leadership evaluations matter equally in both countries. As such, our study provides important insights in the attitudes and behaviour of party members, contributing to current debates on the contemporary meaning of party membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]