New working paper from Stuart Perrett, @drjennings.bsky.social , @jonmellon.bsky.social , @cbwlezien.bsky.social and me: Do polls underestimate support for right-wing parties? Assessing variation in polling error by party family osf.io/preprints/so...

It’s not out for another six months or so, but *Electoral Realignment: How Brexit Reshaped British Voting Behaviour*, my book with Ed Fieldhouse, @profjanegreen.bsky.social , Geoff Evans, @jack-bailey.co.uk and @jonmellon.bsky.social, is up on the OUP website! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

'At this rate I'll beat mummy's record of 15 different PMs by the time I'm 93'

Rob 🏳️‍🌈@rotster.net · 2w ago

I feel like there’s quite a lot to unpack in this image.

Why did class voting in Britain rise, then decline? @olliheath.bsky.social, Humphrey Southall, Paula Aucott & @caprosser.com examine elections from 1885-2024, arguing political agency explains class dealignment better than social change. OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/klGDUJz @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

The rise and fall of class voting in Britain, 1885–2024 - Oliver Heath, Humphrey Southall, Paula Aucott, Christopher Prosser, 2026

Understanding when and why social cleavages shape electoral behaviour is a central concern in the study of democratic politics. While many accounts emphasise th...

buff.ly

Today's absolute must-read for anyone studying/interested in British electoral and party politics over the long term. (Oh, and I'm pretty sure this is indeed a British street despite the classic Citroen in the foreground)!

The class divide in British politics didn’t erode slowly – it collapsed under New Labour

But the shift has more to do with how parties behave than any changes in the class system.

theconversation.com

Why did class voting in Britain rise, then decline? @olliheath.bsky.social, Humphrey Southall, Paula Aucott & @caprosser.com examine elections from 1885-2024, arguing political agency explains class dealignment better than social change. OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/klGDUJz @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

New paper from me, Olli Heath, Humphrey Southall and Paula Aucott, just out in @polstudies.bsky.social: The rise and fall of class voting in Britain, 1885–2024 We link ~140 years of census and election data to map the relationship between class and vote in Britain doi.org/10.1177/0032...

New paper from me, Olli Heath, Humphrey Southall and Paula Aucott, just out in @polstudies.bsky.social: The rise and fall of class voting in Britain, 1885–2024 We link ~140 years of census and election data to map the relationship between class and vote in Britain doi.org/10.1177/0032...

Sometimes its hard to escape the feeling that someone in government has built a model of how policies might affect economic growth but accidently flipped the sign on the output.

Chris Havergal@chrishavergal.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Scoop: teaching funding for English universities to be cut by another £100 million www.timeshighereducation.com/news/governm... via @helenpacker.bsky.social

Really delighted to be joining the editorial board of West European Politics - an excellent journal and home to one of my first publications as a grad student and my series of articles on the 2015-24 UK general elections - in excellent company too!

West European Politics@wepsocial.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🎉 We are delighted to welcome 16 new members to the West European Politics Editorial Advisory Board! Joining us are: Marius Busemeyer, @mbusuioc.bsky.social, @hildecoffe.bsky.social, @antoanetadl.bsky.social, @martingross.bsky.social, Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, @wmjunk.bsky.social…

Miliband was neither especially popular nor unpopular - average feelings towards him during the 2017 election campaign were pretty similar to mid-2017-campaign Corbyn, 2024 Starmer, and 2019 Johnson.

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This is partly true, and I know Bsky loves Ed Miliband, but it's also true that his approval ratings were always dire. From May 2011 to the election in 2015 he didn't have a single positive approval rating from any pollster and he was usually in the -40s or -50s.

We need a democratic big bang, just like the economic one in the 80s: real local politics with autonomy, discretion, and tax-raising powers; proportional representation across the board; an elected upper chamber. All of our other problems are downstream of that. Just grab the bloody nettle.

The charity I'm a trustee for is looking for new trustees to join our board. The McDougall Trust is the independent charity that promotes public understanding of electoral democracy. See the link for more details and how to apply. www.mcdougall.org.uk/news/39/38/M...

Now, I'm no foreign policy genius, but surely the EU suggesting EU students should pay the same fees as home students should not have come as a complete surprise given it was the status quo until six years ago...? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Row over tuition fees cut for European students threatens Starmer’s EU reset

British negotiators ‘blindsided’ by Brussels’ demand for a reduction that could cost universities £140m a year

theguardian.com

All of my work will be published in top journals. The only thing prohibiting publication in those journals right now is the reviewers shooting it down. It will be published in those journals should reviewers not do that.

Gerry Doyle@mgerrydoyle.bsky.social · 5mo ago

this means it is not open for transit

In the year of our lord, 2026, an academic journal has gone from accepting .tex file submissions, to only accepting word documents... (Between an original and R&R submission 🤬).

This is an interesting provocation, and I think David is right that electoral reformers shouldn't just assume that the only (or best) electoral reform is PR. There are two parts to the argument: 1. Majoritarianism > PR 2. If Majoritarianism, then two round elections I disagree with both bits.

David Klemperer@dmk1793.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I've written for the @uniofbathipr.bsky.social blog about why de-alignment and party system breakdown poses challenges for PR as well as FPTP, and why a French-style two-round electoral system might therefore now be optimal for the UK

UK Poll of Polls, 14 February 2026 Reform: 29% (27-31%) Labour: 20% (18-22%) Conservative: 19% (17-20%) Greens: 14% (13-16%) Lib Dem: 12% (11-14%) Other: 3% (3-4%) SNP: 3% (2-3%)

Brushing up on some reading for a research ethics workshop I'm running in a couple of weeks and perhaps getting a little carried away...

Sounds like excellent research and I will not be asking any probing questions about causal identification at this time.

This is fun, even if the British Media, Politics, and Policy cluster is hanging out on the edge of the galaxy.

Theo Sanderson@theo.io · 6mo ago

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

An 'archaic' procedure such as one of the central planks of the British constitution, which establishes the supremacy of the Commons over the Lords...

I bet the author is a British person living in Australia, because my petty gripe is that in Australia you can get a flat white in many sizes (and could 20 years ago when I started drinking coffee there) whereas in Britain people insist it can only be one size. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

My petty gripe: a large flat white is an oxymoron – a bastardisation of the drink Australia gave the world

The integrity of the flat white is being diluted by size inflation. It’s a sign that most people have no idea what they really want at all

theguardian.com

'Immediate reject' is a new peer review option to me... does it mean 'wow this is bad, don't even read my report just hit the reject button'?!?

Procrastinating from writing something by analysing the number of peer reviews I do. Not sure if my new website made me more visible, or getting something into APSR made me look like a serious person, but 2025 was apparently the year journal editors remembered who I was again.

The main thing I'm taking away from this is that more of you should listen to Olivia Chaney, so if you like indie folk, give her a listen!

Lately, I have been reading lots of early 20th century literature; now I want to use semi-colons in everything I write; I feel sad they have fallen into disuse.

Adversarial Poetry sounds like a great research genre. Would definitely read studies of the effect of adversarial poetry on political persuasion, adversarial poetry and affective polarisation, adversarial poetry and misinformation. So many possibilities 😆

Charlie Stross@cstross.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..." https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

Never mind twitter and chat gpt, the cloudflare outage seems to have taken down doi.org!

Not at all relevant to the actual discussion about this, but I remember being really impressed by the Boix paper when I read it as a grad student, whereas now every time I see it I can't get past the fact that in the 1990s you could get an N=22 OLS into the APSR.