Tag Archives: michael thrasher

The 2010 general election: it’s a game of three halves

By Mark Pack | Published 13th January 2010 - 10:20 am

Political coverage and blogging in the UK has a rather odd love-hate relationship with electoral numbers. On the one hand, the latest opinion poll figures get reported, re-reported and mis-reported at length, with the mere fact that a change in ratings is well within the margin of error not being reason enough to stop a cavalcade of comment.

Yet despite this love of talking electoral numbers, those that are talked about come from a fairly narrow range of sources.

So here instead are three other numbers – all simple in concept, but interesting in implication.

First, since 1970 49% of Parliamentary …

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Posted in General Election, Op-eds | Also tagged | 8 Comments

Lib Dems and Labour neck-and-neck on 28%, says voting study

By Stephen Tall | Published 27th December 2009 - 11:05 am

Today’s Times publishes a study by Professor Colin Rallings and Professor Michael Thrasher of Plymouth University based on actual votes cast in the dozens of by-elections that take place for council seats each month. Here are the headline findings:

It shows that although David Cameron’s Conservatives have a 10-point lead over Labour as the year draws to a close, the gap has been narrowing since the summer. The by-election model, which has been reworked to take account of different patterns of competition between the parties, has the Tories on 38%, with both Labour and the Liberal Democrats on 28%.

The calculations

…

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged , , | 13 Comments

Book review: British Electoral Facts

By Mark Pack | Published 9th December 2009 - 11:50 am

For decades, FWS Craig was the doyen of British electoral statistics. His reference works were widely used and often contained facts and figures that he had created from original sources. Yet today he is almost completely unknown.

The reason? He died just before the internet took off. His hard work was locked away in reference volumes either sat on the shelves in libraries beyond the reach of an internet connection or available to purchase – at eye-wateringly expensive prices.

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Posted in Books | Also tagged , , | 1 Comment

What do the academics say? Ballot paper ordering

By Mark Pack | Published 12th September 2009 - 4:55 pm

Welcome to a new occasional series covering what academics have to say about politics, elections and public opinion. As with most things in life, academic research comes in various flavours, including the good, the bad and the stating the bleeding obvious (though investigating ‘what everyone knows’ does have a role, as just sometimes it isn’t true after all).

Today’s selection is about the order in which names appear on ballot papers can affect election results.

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Posted in Election law, What do the academics say? | Also tagged | 7 Comments

Labour-Tory two-party politics is now the minority

By Mark Pack | Published 10th April 2007 - 5:33 pm

Bad news for Labour and Conservative activists who don’t like those pesky liberals. Sorry folks.

I’ve been taking a look at the recently published Thrasher and Rallings projected results for the new Westminster Parliamentary boundaries.

Take all the seats where Labour and first and the Conservatives are second, or vice-versa, strip out the three-way marginals and … voila … you only have a minority of the seats in Parliament. Or to put it the other way round – the majority of Westminster constituencies are now not straight-forward Labour/Conservative contests.

Anyone fancy a bet on how long it will take the media to notice?

Posted in News | Also tagged | 5 Comments