Andrew Barclay

Late deciders, higher turnout: what the Gorton and Denton byelection taught us about voters High numbers of undecideds may partially explain the late swing to the Greens.

New piece from w/ @hannahbunting.bsky.social & @jess-smith.bsky.social on the Gorton & Denton byelection, and what it might tell us about British politics.

We cover turnout, late-deciding voters, gender gaps & the continuing fragmentation of the party system 🧵

theconversation.com/late-decider...

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...

One for the real headz. (We built a bot that checks the major UK political advertisers on Meta every couple of hours and posts their ads).

📢 JOB ALERT! Postdoc opportunity in Political Behaviour & Political Economy (UKRI‑funded) - Please do share with anyone who might be a great fit. If you’re interested or would like to know more, please feel free to get in touch!! jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

📣 Call for Papers:
🗓️ 23-24 April 2026 at LSE

Submit full papers: forms.office.com/e/9qVWeNTK0p

Please share with colleagues & early-career researchers!

🚨New article in @electoralstudies.bsky.social🚨

New method using open-text survey, parliament speech analysis & conjoint experiment to detect policies/issues where all of:
1) bottom-up public demand
2) elites are neglecting it
3) would motivate vote choice if party adopt it

tinyurl.com/44ryyybc

🧵

Glad to see our paper on religious cleavages in Western Europe (with @melff.bsky.social & Kamil Marcinkiewicz) out at the @ejprjournal.bsky.social ! 



cup.org/4qhTx3j

'Avoiding the iceberg' - LabourList Labour’s polling crisis isn’t about Reform voters but losing progressives. To avoid electoral collapse, the party must clarify its values and unite its bloc.

Good to see Labour politicians talking about blocs!

labourlist.org/2026/01/avoi...

If you want to know more, you can read our article introducing the idea in Britain here: academic.oup.com/pa/article/7...

Also Green and Miori's excellent work here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Starting to think the copy under our tree wasn't the real McCoy

A reminder to get your abstracts in by December 5th. Any aspect of gender, elections, public opinion, parties, candidates etc. very welcome!
@uompols.bsky.social

@psaepop.bsky.social

🚨 Please send in your application by 10 December to be considered for this ESRC studentship in collaboration with @campaign-lab.bsky.social. Both home and international students are eligible for funding. Some advice on how to apply below 👇

Such important context for the scrapping of the two child limit:

UK politics followers, these graphs are in a paper by @jamesdgriffiths.bsky.social and co (inc. me).

There's so much useful info in them.

The long-term context for the politics of our time, how the 'Brexit elections' differed, though note the Y axes may need to be bigger for the next election!!

🚨 LSE Assistant Professor in Political Science 🚨

We’re hiring a tenure-track assistant professor - any area of empirical political science - to join our wonderful Government Dept @lsegovernment.bsky.social

Any questions, please reach out to me

📣 Please share! 📣

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

We have a new tenure-track job in @lsegovernment.bsky.social at AP level (empirical political science, open subfield): jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... Please apply and share with colleagues who might be interested!

New article in @journalrep.bsky.social on British Ethnic Minority Brexit Voter Attitudes to Immigration

LSE Collaborative Studentship with Campaign Lab LSE Collaborative Studentship with Campaign Lab

🚨 We have a cool new ESRC PhD studentship opportunity on the topic of political persuasion for someone interested in campaigning, field experiments and/or computational methods @lsegovernment.bsky.social, in collaboration with
@campaign-lab.bsky.social. All info 👇
www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

🚨 Job Opportunity! 🚨 Applications are now open for a new 2.5-year postdoc at @edinburghpir.bsky.social to examine how parliaments gather, analyse and use different types of knowledge - see the full job listing here: elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Following the success of our spring seminar series earlier this year, we @psapolpsychology.bsky.social are running an autumn/winter series, with four online presentations by great scholars.

Please do register and come along to hear about some really fascinating research!

Article - Nuffield Politics Research Centre

NEW!
In Liverpool for Labour Conference...

Starmer is concentrating on Reform but Labour shouldn't mistake their threat on the right, even in Leave voting heartlands.

Our new analysis w/ @martamiori.bsky.social explains:

politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

🚨📢 I am hiring a PhD candidate /research assistant in Swiss Politics and/or Comparative Politics (100%)!

🚨📢 Je recrute un·e assistant·e diplômé·e en science politique en politique suisse et comparée!

Please join me @unil.bsky.social, Switzerland!

Thanks for sharing! polisky @sspunil.bsky.social

It was really fun to talk to @matthewholehouse.bsky.social about our paper. Voters now separate political parties into left-liberal and right-conservative blocs, and most of the (extensive) vote switching that we saw in 2024 (and since) is within these blocs. This is really important going forward.

Is it rational to expect to win elections? @mbarnfield.bsky.social argues so-called "wishful thinking" about election outcomes is part of how voters make rational sense of their role in democracies. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/g5aHeG0

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

At #EPOP2025, we were delighted to award Pippa Norris the 2025 Sir David Butler Prize for Lifetime Contribution to the Study of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties.

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

Article abstract, which says: The educational cleavage is restructuring electoral competition in many democracies, yet there has been insufficient attention on how variation in educational content affects this. In order to address this, this article combines English administrative school records with a unique representative panel of adolescents to estimate the within-individual effect of studying different subjects at school on political party preference. This analysis finds that studying arts and humanities subjects leads to greater support for socially liberal parties, whilst studying business and economics increases support for economically right-wing parties. Students who study technical subjects become more likely to support socially conservative and economically right-wing parties. These relationships between particular subjects and party support also persist into adulthood. As such, this article provides new evidence on the importance of subjects taken in secondary school for political socialisation, during the impressionable years of adolescence.

📣 NEW PAPER ALERT! 🚨

"School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support"

Just published in @wepsocial.bsky.social with @nspmartin.bsky.social and @rolandkappe.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

🧵👇

Happy to give him a pass for today's dismissal, but his record for the last 18 months or so is dire.

I can't see him losing his place until the Ashes have been decided, but you'd have thought he'd be on the thinnest of ice at that point if his form continues.

Jobs at the University of Leeds

JOB: Lecturer in the Politics of Climate Change

This is a permanent post, based here in the School of Politics and International Studies at Leeds.

Application deadline 30 June, so please spread the word!

jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

@polisatleeds.bsky.social

❗ The 𝘞𝘡𝘉 𝘉𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯 (@wzb.bsky.social‬) establishes a 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 for the 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲 and is looking for its future 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 ❗

📣 Let all the excellent democracy researchers out there know! ⁣
⁣
wzb.eu/en/jobs/dire... ⁣

#Polisky
@epsanet.bsky.social @ecpr.bsky.social @apsa.bsky.social

Call for proposals!

EPOVB Early-Career Fellowship

deadline: July 1, 2025

Submit to Melissa R. Michelson, at melissa.michelson@menlo.edu

dropbox.com/scl/fi/rcmsv...