Chitralekha Basu

I think we would encourage a less polarised politics if, over this next generation, it got harder rather than easier to guess somebody’s party preferences from their ethnicity and faith alone. My “one nation test” for any party that aspires to govern is that no citizen should feel any tension between supporting that party and their colour or creed. For all of their diversity at the top table, the post-Cameron Conservatives risk going backwards again with black British and British Muslim citizens, in particular. Starmer’s challenge may be both to reconnect with British Muslims, beyond this conflict, and to rebuild trust with Britain’s Jews after Labour’s failures on anti-Semitism – seeing no contradiction between the two.

Is it getting harder or easier to guess somebody’s party preferences from their ethnicity + faith alone?

It might surprise most media commentators that it is in fact now harder to guess party vote from just having ethnicity/faith to go on in 2024-26 in Britain that at any point in last 50 years?

EPSS Travel Grants for 2026 Belfast conference:

PhD students & junior scholars @ institutions in European countries that are often underrepresented, can apply for full fee waiver & £500 stipend

Apply: lnkd.in/ehXjhCgf
Deadline: March 8, 11:59pm GMT.

More details: lnkd.in/eZTP5sWR

Beyond Forecasting: Using MRP (multi-level regression with post-stratification) to investigate minority political behaviour at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Beyond Forecasting: Using MRP (multi-level regression with post-stratification) to investigate minority political behaviour at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

*Academics of Bluesky:* Do you know a great UG/PG student with excellent quants skills?

@nspmartin.bsky.social and I are advertising a great fully-funded PhD on MRP and minority voting with our friends at Ipsos, so send them our way! ✌️

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

A Danish lesson for Labour on how to stop migrants and start winning Like the home secretary, I visited recently to learn how the centre-left is riding high and reclaiming the asylum debate from the populist right

Denmark has *far* worse outcomes - economic, social and integration - than the UK.

Just a fantasyland for those who want an excuse for their own xenophobia and/or are incapable of doing the hard work of confronting the UK's real problems.

www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

A Danish lesson for Labour on how to stop migrants and start winning Like the home secretary, I visited recently to learn how the centre-left is riding high and reclaiming the asylum debate from the populist right

Much stronger case for Scandi countries to learn from Britain on integration - if judge by educational outcomes for children of migrants, inclusion as a norm in professional & public life, longterm more contact & reduction in prejudice (despite 2020s polarisation)
www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

Over the past eighteen months, the political science consensus on the nature of Labour's vote has been absolutely correct - and yet also completely ignored by pundits and strategists who continue to get it wrong.

Article - Nuffield Politics Research Centre

@martamiori.bsky.social and I have been writing, since 2024, about why Labour's 'Reform' challenge and emphasis was based on a misunderstanding of Labour's vote. Here for anyone interested: politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

🧵 Quick thoughts on the result. First it really is a seismic result for the Greens, they've never got more than 10.2% in a by-election, today they won with 4x that. Two big takeaways: Electoral fragmentation has eaten two party politics and the Polanski poll bounce is very real

Without family voting, British Asians would have instead voted for…the guy who thinks that they are not British? Or the woman who both reputable polls showed in third place? Seems legit!

Gorton and Denton by-election result:

GRN: 40.7% (+27.5)
REF: 28.7% (+14.7)
LAB: 25.4% (-25.3)
CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
LDEM: 1.8% (-2.1)

Green GAIN from Labour.

On settlement and citizenship, it is crucial that the government rethinks its major reforms. Ten years to settlement - which only Switzerland has adopted - should be the ceiling, not the norm. To introduce the longest periods of “unsettlement” in any democracy – and applying them to people already here – will harm integration, not promote it. Applying these retrospectively will create an enormous constituency of grievance that will wreck any attempt to rebalance Labour’s voice on immigration. Labour may be tempted to change its tone of voice more than its policy on immigration. Indeed, the party’s comfort zone may be to try to avoid the topic, so as not to give more oxygen to Reform’s favourite issue. But changing the subject has its limits. If one of Labour’s central arguments in 2029 will be to reject importing Trumpism into Britain, it will need to find a distinct voice to articulate its alternative agenda too. What Labour needs is not a “lurch to the left” as much as a significant rebalancing of its voice to find an authentic centre-left account of how to manage immigration and integration. A liberal party membership will want to see its values reflected in policy – while remaining mindful of balancing the electoral pressures of different constituency contexts. Controlling immigration fairly means fairness for those who come to Britain and the communities they join – with more confidence to reject rather than echo the authoritarian hard-right politics of remigration and racism.

"Labour needs to rethink its major settlement reforms"

"Applying these retrospectively to people already here will create an enormous constituency of grievance that would wreck any attempt to rebalance Labour’s voice on immigration"
www.thenewworld.co.uk/sunder-katwa...

A Rich Woman's World? Wealth and Gendered Paths to Office We introduce and seek to explain a new and surprising fact about members of the US Congress: since at least the 1980s, Congresswomen have been substantially wealthier than Congressmen serving in the ....

In the midst of chaos, excited to share a new publication with @aeggers.bsky.social and Marko Klašnja, dx.doi.org/10.1111/lsq..... As usual, I write an embarrassing thread about my wonderful coauthors-- 🧵 (1/)

A fascinating bit of convergent evolution that the McSweeney-Starmer project has basically ended up leaving Labour in the same position as its Western European peers…as a result of deliberate, wholly avoidable choices.

🚨 Please share widely! 🚨

I'm hiring a postdoc (from Aug 1) to help build a new research program on politically sustainable immigration policies at Notre Dame.

Looking for a social scientist with strong quant skills, familiarity with new computational tools, and interest in public-facing research.

I recently discovered something that has markedly improved my experience of daily life: if you Google something and add “-ai” after the search term, it gives you search results without the AI overview

Call for applications for a 3 years doctoral contract For the ERC GREENLOSS Project - Application deadline: May 17, 2026

📢 JOB ALERT! Fully funded 3-year PhD in Climate & Comparative Politics at @sciencespo-cee.bsky.social. Starting in September.
The project is on the political consequences of climate policies in carbon-intensive communities across Europe.
🗓 Deadline: May 17
www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etude...

🚨 New WP w/ @leonardocarella.bsky.social on OSF

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

We usually think that social identities precede preferences

We show the reverse is also true: people update their social identities to match their immigration preferences

Focus: class identity in 🇬🇧 + Christian identity in 🇮🇹

Has an electoral coalition ever been so misunderstood?

Are elected representatives’ intimate ties representative? Examining their socio-economic status in 13 countries | European Journal of Political Research | Cambridge Core Are elected representatives’ intimate ties representative? Examining their socio-economic status in 13 countries - Volume 65 Issue 1

65.1🦋

Is representation out of touch? 🤔

Nino Junius & Stefaan Walgrave comment on a #RepresentationGap between high and low SES backgrounds in politics, suggesting that those who benefit the most from inclusion in their personal networks often lack it the most 🤝

PP y Vox apoyarán en el Congreso prohibir el burka y el niqab en espacios públicos La iniciativa se debate el martes en el Parlamento a propuesta de los ultras para legislar contra “la circulación masiva de personas con el rostro cubierto”

The Spanish right supports banning the use of burka and niqab in public spaces. The argument for the policy seems to be (partly) that it will promote the emancipation of women.

We happen to have evidence that a similar policy in France had the *opposite* effect.

1/2

elpais.com/espana/2026-...

Great piece that matches my view substantively. Articulated from my more pro-rational choice perspective: MVT is a theory with assumptions. The problem isn’t MVT but that people don’t know the assumptions, how uncertain they are, or their implications. It’s like Econ 101 supply and demand.

One of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, forces in public opinion is elite leadership. Partisans largely “follow the lead“ of their side’s elites.
Arguing Dems shouldn’t try to shape opinion is arguing they should give up this power voluntarily. That’s dumb, not to mention morally vacuous

It’s over for this country

Very cool. I wonder if same was true with Blair/New Labour- voters didn’t know what was coming?

New and open access, in @psrm.bsky.social: What happens when we make politicians draw distributions? Nic Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social and I explore whether the large errors politicians make about public opinion are artificially inflated by how researchers ask them to estimate it /1
cup.org/4kltoyE

Greens look set to clean up as Labour switchers move left Labour voters liked the insurgent party even before the arrival of their new leader. As local elections approach, Zack Polanski appears ready to break through in the areas Keir Starmer neglected

My latest for the Observer on the growing Green threat to Labour and why London’s “all up” local elections could provide some of the biggest drama in this May’s local and devolved elections observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

My wish for 2026 is that politicians and political analysts realize that public opinion is endogenous to elite behavior, that polling single issues tells us nothing about electorally successful strategies, that politics means shaping public opinion and that popularism is the death of progressivism.

BJPolS abstract of an academic article discussing how democratic institutions prioritize citizen preferences regarding economic and physical security, with a focus on varied democratic features across thirty countries.

NEW -

Elections Without Constraints? The Appeal of Electoral Autocracy Across the World - https://cup.org/49auQPf

- @anjaneundorf.bsky.social, @sirianned.bsky.social, Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen & @aykutozturk.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

The Most Powerful Politics Influencers Barely Post About Politics New research shows that social media creators have enormous influence over their audiences' politics—especially those who don't normally share political content.

Researchers find that influencers influence. New experimental evidence for old theories around opinion leaders, parasocial relationships, and persuasion, with implications for political messaging in our digitally connected era.

www.wired.com/story/the-mo...

Bloc Parties In a world of bloc politics, what's a good offensive strategy?

'The so-called ‘hero voters’ Labour targeted in 2024 did not actually turn out for them in any great numbers. So not only are Labour fighting the last war, they are fighting it with a battle-plan that didn’t actually work. It’s Labour’s very own winter invasion of Russia.' 👏 @benansell.bsky.social