We've published the 2025 local elections handbook in collaboration with the University of Exeter's Elections Centre. This includes ward- and candidate-level results from last year's locals. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/2025-local-e...
"Weird aggregates" was my initial reaction too
Is this an artefact of averaging over countries with very different age structures? A representative sample in Indonesia is going to have a lot more gen Z than boomers...
This makes me think of @jack-bailey.co.uk 's half life of the economic vote paper and yardstick/benchmarking models of the economic vote doi.org/10.1017/S000...
This is a very good thread. We can perhaps quibble over self reports, but "average economic growth in the years you've been alive" is a very telling metric
Thank you!
Me sowing/clearing journal submissions before paternity leave: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes! Empty outbox!
Me reaping/returning from paternity leave: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
Congratulations!
If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.
Quite hard to keep up with the various Chinese government influence stories in the UK today. This is not the story I thought I was clicking on www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Yeah, I was very conscious that there were clues in there that were going past me, but it didn't feel like a too-clever-by-half detective novel at all
I can't imagine anyone who understood and appreciated the book really wanting to turn it into a film...
Okay, why did none of you tell me how good AS Byatt's Possession is?
Pleased to see this work with @rozemarijnvandijk.bsky.social @martamiori.bsky.social & @robfordmancs.bsky.social published: We look at the effects of involving party members in candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election: eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
*Representation of the People Bill update*
Steve Reed has just announced: 'We will repeal in full the power for government to impose a strategy and policy statement on the Electoral Commission'.
A very welcome change. I set out last week why it was needed.
constitution-unit.com/2026/02/26/t...
This would mean that Maths GCSE no longer requires you to know that the area of a rectangle is length x width. Or for Physics GCSE, to know that speed = distance/time. Presumably instead the formulae will be given in the exam paper. This is letting pupils down.
Some new published research from me (first in a while!).
I looked at a century of debates on legislator pay to see how British MPs justified their own salaries. These debates provide a unique window into how Parliamentarians navigated the transition to professional politics. doi.org/10.1093/pa/g...
A lot of my academic focuses on public attitudes about foreign policy and the use of force. The just initiated bombing of Iran lacks many of the components that build and sustain domestic support for military action.
I don't think gerrymandering is really an issue in the UK compared to things like voter ID. Why would parties ignore areas where their support is low *within a constituency*?
I think the emphasis would not be on particular places, but trends: "the more rural the polling station, the lower the Labour vote", that kind of thing
I like to think more data might drown out some bad or incorrect takes, but I don't think that's stopped people before
Would the availability of polling station level results mean more or less analysis of by election results? Would this be good or bad?
Cc Sainte-Laguë-curious @alanrenwick.bsky.social
One of the most infamous results in mathematics was plagiarized www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...
🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about...
🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples?
We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...
📢 Study out in Research & Politics!
We (@lukasbirkenmai1.bsky.social @wurthmann.bsky.social @msaeltzer.bsky.social) find that directly elected MPs talk more about local & deprived places than list MPs on social media.
🔍 doi.org/10.1177/2053...
Some Highlights [1/3]
Get me the most Belgian street name possible.
No, that’s too Belgian.
Restore Britain will, without apology or fear, deport the third world orcs who break into our country, rape young women and then expect the British to tolerate their presence. There is finally a political party that will defend our home, our people, our shires. Restore Britain.
The UK parliament now has an MP who is openly racist and far right. This is, for the current era, new ground, and it will be interesting to see how - if at all – other MPs respond.
If we're combining votes, does that mean some kind of Borda count, ESC style?
Also: one of the world's largest videoconferencing platforms was founded by someone who speaks a tonal language!
