Britain's oldest social survey. We provide non-partisan and independent data and research on British general elections. Account run by the 2014-2026 BES team.
🚨 Data Release 🚨
We are very pleased to announce the release our first batch from the 2019 General Election:
1) Waves 17-19 of our Internet Panel
2) An updated constituency results file
3) An expert survey of party positions
Details and links here:
Sir David Butler founded the British Election Study with Donald Stokes in the early 1960s. His contribution to political science continues to shape how we think study British politics. We mourn his passing and send our very best wishes to his family and all who knew him.
We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the next round of British Election Study funding by the
@ESRC
. The BES 2019-23 team consists of: Ed Fieldhouse,
@ProfJaneGreen
, Geoff Evans,
@jon_mellon
, and
@caprosser
.
🚨📈📊
We’re pleased to announce wave 20 of the British Election Study Internet Panel, 2014-2023.
This is our first post-virus wave, conducted between 3 & 21 June 2020. We have a host of great new questions and can’t wait to see what you do with them.
📊 We have some new analysis up on volatility, realignment and electoral shocks in the context of Brexit and the last election.
Click through for the thread 👇
🚨📊🎉
Happy Friday from team BES. To celebrate, we're pleased to announce the release of wave 21 of the BES Internet Panel!
You can read about the latest update here:
Have fun!
🚨 New Research 🚨
The BES team explores Brexit's persistence and why the Conservatives are losing support.
Brexit still guides vote in Britain, but the Conservatives face losses among pro/anti-Europe voters critical of their performance.
🧵👇
🏆 Introducing BESt: our new prize in conjunction with our friends
@IpsosMORI
&
@YouGov
for the best published paper using
@BESResearch
data 🏆
Full details 👇
Women, men, and the 2017 general election - new blog from
@ProfJaneGreen
and
@caprosser
looking at how gender and voting behaviour changed between 2015 and 2017:
Using these data, we examine how the much discussed "age cleavage" in voting evolved at the 2019 GE.
In terms of turnout, the relationship is fairly stable across the last 3 elections: the young are less likely to to vote than the old, and turnout rises as people get older.
Finally, a big thank you to
@IpsosMORI
and
@NatCen
who conducted the data collection necessary to make this survey possible given the current context 👏
We're pleased to announce our new advisory board. Made up of scholars amongst the best and the brightest in their fields, our new board members will help to shape the BES in the years to come 🗳🇬🇧
Wave 15 of the BES Internet Panel is out now! Wave 15 was conducted in March 2019, immediately before the original Brexit deadline. More info and links to data here:
Happy new data day! 😎📊
We’re pleased to announce the release of not 1, but 2 new waves of the BES Internet Panel.
Wave 22 was collected at the end of last year and wave 23 earlier this year to coincide with the local elections
For more info:
Labour’s changes were more dramatic. From 2015 to 2017 Labour added about 10 pts before dropping 8 pts in 2019. This rise and fall occurred in all the age groups, but the changes are more dramatic amongst younger voters.
📊 BES Internet Panel Wave 25 is live! 📈
- Covers the May 2023 local elections
- New questions on attitudes towards the economy, including new measures on nationalisation
- Fixes to profiles data to ensure maximum completeness on demographics
It's always a pleasure to promote cutting-edge research that uses our data. And in the world's leading political science journal no less!
Turns out that MPs suffer little electoral consequences for their position on Brexit, despite all the noise!
For the technically-minded,
@IpsosMORI
also put together an excellent set of technical documents that explain how they collected the data and what accommodations they made in light of the pandemic
Correction and update - an earlier version of the 2015 and 2017 vote bar chart in our gender blog incorrectly plotted the votes as a percentage of the parties displayed in the graph rather than a percentage of all parties.
Collecting gold-standard, random probability data like these is a tall order, so in the interest of transparency, we've also made available a release note to accompany the data's already extensive documentation:
Defectors from the Conservatives are younger, believe they have handled the economy poorly, and dislike Boris Johnson.
People that are left-wing or critical of the UK Govt on immigration also defect, but there is no effect for changes in household economic circumstances.
📊 PANEL WAVE 24 NOW AVAILABLE 📊
- Mini wave of ≈15k people
- 1st to 14th December 2022
- MII variable coded to W24
- Constituency and local authority ONS codes for linking
- Bug fixes & improvements
- Change log now included in the documentation
🚨 Version 1.1.0 of the 2019 British Election Study Post-Election Random Probability Survey is now available.
A minor update: we've added NS-SEC and NS-SEC Analytic variables to the data.
👉
@jon_mellon
Using the wave 16 data, Ed Fieldhouse examines the difference between Brexit support in Labour seats, and Brexit support amongst Labour voters:
New in the
@BJPolS
: Fascinating new research by
@stefanie_reher
on disability, attitudes, and representation.
Though 15% of people live with a disability, disabled voters and candidates remain understudied. Well done Stefanie for this cutting-edge work!
Those who are switching to another party tend to switch to a party that shares their *current* position on Brexit – those defectors who are more supportive of Europe switch to Labour, those more opposed switch to Reform.
2. Geography
Conservative successes in the "Red Wall" defined 2019. And just as the Conservatives did well in Leave seats, Labour did well in Remain ones. History tells us that a changing geographic basis of support can in itself be indicative of realignment.
Heard about BES data but not sure what you can do with it? Not sure where to get the data? Wondering about what weights to use? Then join
@jon_mellon
for a
@UKDataService
webinar today at 3pm:
In 2015 and 2017, the Liberal Democrats languished on around 8% of the vote, before increasing their vote to 12% in 2019. Our data suggest that this increase happened relatively evenly across age groups.
For all you data fans, we have a guest contribution by
@adamfcbrodie
on how to use our data to visual responses over time in the R programming language!
Wave 16 of the BES Internet Panel is out!
Wave 16 was conducted in May-June 2019, immediately following the European Parliament elections. In total 37,959 respondents took the wave.
More information and links to the data here:
New article with
@caprosser
and
@PoliSciJack
using
@BESResearch
. We find COVID politics fit into traditional economic left-right competition rather than liberal-authoritarianism which structured fights over Brexit and immigration
OA link:
3. Social Class
2019 saw the class-basis of British politics continue to change. Labour's grip on the working class weakened. Indeed, the class basis of support in Britain looks much different to what it did in the heyday of class politics.
6. Brexit Identities
In an age of party dealignment, one symptom of realignment is the rise of social and political identities. Leave and Remain identities grew following the 2016 vote, peaked between then and 2017, then receded only very slightly in 2019.
🚨We’re advertising TWO new jobs 🚨
*Research Associate:*
- £35k-£43k
- Perfect for recent PhD grad
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Further, between 2015 and 2017 the Conservative party increased its share of the vote by about five percentage points, adding a further point in 2019. Most of that extra support in 2017 was from the two oldest age groups, who maintained their support in 2019.
1. Volatility
2019 saw a marked decrease in individual-level volatility in compared to 2017 and 2015. In fact, individual-level volatility is now at a similar to 1997 or 2001.
Support might, thus, be settling into a new (relatively) stable pattern.