People will say this is comms, but really it’s a function of policy (there has been a flurry of action) and character/content (Burnham is just better at this stuff than his recent predecessors, including BoJo).

Luke Tryl@luketryl.bsky.social · 4d ago

Burnham seems to be commanding the battle for the attention economy 36% have seen content from Burnham - including over half of 18-24 year olds. 16% have seen Farage content, no one else cracks 10%. Some of this will be the prime ministerial pulpit; but it’s lodging with people.

Right, let's have a look at the new UK line-up for EU relations tl;dr complete clear-out of senior politicians and reduced weight in Cabinet 1/

Georg von Harrach@georgvh.com · 3w ago

UK's new EU negotiator looks to be Hamish Falconer who Andy Burnham has appointed Minister for Intergovernmental Relations & European Relations

Andy Burnham enters 10 Downing Street on Monday as Britain's newest Prime Minister. What does he stand for and what challenges does he face? Coming up shortly on @theworld.org f/t @miriamsorace.bsky.social @uniofreading.bsky.social Dr Roli Asthana @chathamhouse.org Tune in: theworld.org

The report from our EPSS 2026 roundtable, Protecting Democracy in the Age of AI, is now available! The discussion covered the latest on how generative and agentic AI impact democratic processes, and the risks and opportunities for representation and policymaking Read here: www.poal.co.uk/events/

"before the 2016 vote, it had a serious voice in both Brussels and Washington. It has lost both"

Bye bye #EPSS2026 - the GOAT of all conferences ♥️ @epssnet.bsky.social

🚨 POAL roundtable at @epssnet.bsky.social (EPSS) 2026: Protecting Democracy in the Age of AI — join us to discuss the democratic risks of AI technologies with a great lineup of @poalab.bsky.social and @aimediademlab.bsky.social experts

You can see some of our early public work here: convergent-opinion.com/local-electi... convergent-opinion.com/impact Get in touch if you're interested in working with us! info@convergent-opinion.com

Personal news: After four years at Labour, I’m moving on to set up Convergent Opinion with my brilliant co-founder @fintan-smith.bsky.social! We’re building a new polling company to develop better ways of understanding and shifting public opinion - particularly for progressive organisations.

What happens when you ask an AI chatbot for political information? In experiments with ChatGPT, Grok, and DeepSeek, we show that even implicit demographic and ideological cues embedded in AI chats shape the news and frames users receive. Study here: osf.io/preprints/so... @zachdickson.bsky.social

What happens when you ask an AI chatbot for political information? In experiments with ChatGPT, Grok, and DeepSeek, we show that even implicit demographic and ideological cues embedded in AI chats shape the news and frames users receive. Study here: osf.io/preprints/so... @zachdickson.bsky.social

Can political messages become too personalized ? New podcast episode w/ @miriamsorace.bsky.social on nano-targeting now available! 📺 Stream here : pod.link/1851725697 @simonhix.bsky.social @poalab.bsky.social

We are pleased to share that the report from our 2026 Local Elections event is now available The report brings together key insights and discussion points from the event, focusing on the evolving dynamics of local elections and their broader implications See the report here: poal.co.uk/events/

Happy to have contributed my reactions to the State Opening of Parliament for @uk.theconversation.com on the government’s EU bill and the current state of public opinion on UK–EU relations - UK seems locked in a suboptimal equilibrium for the foreseeable future theconversation.com/state-openin...

State opening of parliament 2026: experts on plans for cost of living, EU ties, tourist tax and more

The government has laid out its plans for the next parliamentary session.

theconversation.com

Roundtable on what comes next for the parties Conservatives are aiming most of their attacks at Labour but Reform is the bigger threat to them Meanwhile, Labour needs to outline a clearer ideological sense of what it is for rather than triangulating between Reform and Green

Roundtable on campaigning an tactical voting Strong local campaigns matter at the margins but can't stop major shift in attitudes A lot of tactical voting at the 2024 GE but less evidence of that in the locals. The top two candidates in a huge number of wards is changing — isn't simple for voters

Roundtable on polls and the media They discussed the increased use of MRP polls in this campaign. There was some scepticism on their utility — that while they may indicate where party support is weak and strong, in an era of fragmentation they are prone to a lot of error.

John Curtice walked through his interpretation of the results. They confirmed fragmentation with the combined Lab+Con vote falling a lot in England, Scotland, and Wales. They also showed Brexit still matters with Reform increasing much more in strongly Leave areas.

For the rest of England, @hannahbunting.bsky.social showed that while Reform gained more seats from Labour than the Tories, they gained more from the Tories as a proportion of the seats they were defending Reform won in lower turnout areas but also areas with highest increase in turnout

In London, Tony Travers highlighted that London's boroughs are more fragmented than ever before in terms of party control Simultaneously, London is the last region or nation in the UK that resembles traditional British politics — Lab+Con+LD still won more than three quarters of the seats

On Wales, @jaclarner.bsky.social showed how national identity was changing in Wales, with more people identifying as only Welsh, and increasing Left-Right polarisation along the lines of Welsh vs British identification Reform also doing better than the Tories among stronger Welsh identifying areas

On Scotland, @robjohns75.bsky.social highlighted how independence still drives voting intention in Holyrood elections. Focus from unionist parties on "getting out the SNP" acts as a proxy for the issue because the SNP so much embodies independence.

We heard from @robfordmancs.bsky.social about one of the precursors to the 7 May election, the Gorton & Denton by-election G&D is "frankenstein" constituency with a Reform friendly side and a Green friendly side — both those parties repeated their successes in the by-election at the local election

We are here at LSE for their 2026 Elections event organised in collaboration with POAL! 🗳️ Throughout the afternoon, top academics on elections and public opinion in the UK will be giving their analysis of what happened on 7 May, what this means for the country, and what happens next.

I fear Labour people risk falling into an ecological fallacy visible from space when reacting to these results. Here is what is very clear in results so far: Labour are losing *seats* to Reform, but... Labour are losing *votes* to the Greens Greens split the vote, Ref comes thru middle

This time next week there's going to be a lot of hot takes and spin knocking around, especially re: Reform. I've written a short primer for @politicshome.bsky.social on how to stay sane and navigate the immediate post-election chaos. Thread here too. 🧵 www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

Misunderstood, over interpreted, unrepresentative: How to read the local election results

The internet will be teeming with hot takes as soon as the first declarations come in on Friday morning. To help you navigate a weekend of noise, h...

politicshome.com

"measuring [LLM] agents’ relative issue saliences using party manifestos as a source of data is a harder problem than measuring their issue positions" New article from @kenbenoit.bsky.social and Michael Laver on the challenges with LLMs measuring issue salience Read here: doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Measuring issue salience for political parties using LLMs

Understanding both party positions on issues and the relative importance, or salience, they attach to these is central to the study of party competition. Recent work shows that large language model...

doi.org

📣 The programme for the European Political Science Society (EPSS) conference in Belfast is now out 👇

EPSS@epssnet.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨 EPSS 2026 Conference updates 🚨 The programme is now live. You can access the programme here: virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75765/... 🧵

Starmer defends fast-tracking EU rules into UK law ft.trib.al/6rzUKCs

Starmer defends fast-tracking EU rules into UK law

Prime minister says mechanism would help cut business costs and bring down prices

ft.trib.al

AJPS article from @kenbenoit.bsky.social, Scott de Marchi, Conor Laver, Michael Laver, and Jinshuai Ma on using LLMs to analyse political texts. 🧵 1/8 Social science research requires reliable extraction of information from texts to identify authors' preferences on various policies and issues.