Tag Archives: polling stations

Mark Pack

Can polling station location alter how people vote?

By Mark Pack | Thu 26th January 2012 - 9:55 am

I’ve written before about how the number and location of polling stations has an impact on turnout, but what about the candidate choices people make when they are in a polling station?

A new academic study of 99 people suggests the choice of building for a polling station can have an impact on people’s political outlooks:

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Posted in Election law and What do the academics say? | Also tagged | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

Will polling stations start being moved to raise turnout at elections?

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 10:55 am

I’ve blogged a few times before about the way that increasing the number of polling stations, or locating them better, can increase turnout, by reducing the average travel time for (non-postal) voters to get to their polling place.

However, whilst things that involve technology and electricity (text voting, internet voting et al.) tend to grab the headlines and get demands for action (usually from people who haven’t noticed the previous British trials which showed their failure to have a significant impact on turnout), the rather more prosaic act of wondering about which school halls to use and where to locate …

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Posted in Election law | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

What do the academics say? More polling stations can raise turnout

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th September 2011 - 2:55 pm

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research.

Earlier this year I wrote about the merits of experimenting with increasing the number of polling stations:

This is a greatly under-researched area, and has not ever been tested directly in Britain. However, aside from the common-sense thought that shorter travel distance to polling stations may increase likelihood to vote, there is also some practical evidence from an analysis of voters in Brent over 20 years: “we conclude that the local geography of the polling station can have a significant impact on voter turnout and that there should be

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Posted in Election law and What do the academics say? | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

What a more virtuous and positive politics? Stick polling stations on the first floor

By Mark Pack | Tue 12th April 2011 - 8:54 am

Scientific American reports on a recent Journal of Experimental Social Psychology article by Larry Sanna and his associates at the University of North Carolina:

Building on research showing the power of metaphors to shape our thinking, Sanna and his colleagues noted that height is often used as a metaphor for virtue: moral high ground, God on high, looking up to good people, etc. If people were primed to think about height, they wondered, might people be more virtuous?

In a series of four different studies, the authors found consistent support for their predictions. In the first study they found that twice

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Posted in Election law | 5 Comments
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