Local election results – England and Wales The 2012 local elections, leaving the London mayoralty aside, were a considerable success for Labour. While in 2011 Labour did very well in the big urban areas and not so well elsewhere, in 2012 Labour advanced pretty much everywhere that the party is a viable proposition, including such […]
Or… which councils’ websites should you have open as browser tabs by 11pm on Thursday 3 May? The local election polls close at 10pm on Thursday, but in contrast to the general election in 2010, a large number of counts are starting on the Friday morning. This is probably sensible from the point […]
HoC Political and Constitutional Reform Committee Thursday 8 March 2012 Wilson Room Meeting started at 10.01am. Ended at 11.44am Recall of MPs Witnesses Lewis Baston, Democratic Audit John Turner, Association of Electoral Administrators Source and alternative player (Windows Media Player)
Last week, the Boundary Commission for England presented its proposals for new constituencies based on 600 rather than 650 parliamentary seats. Democratic Audit’s Lewis Baston undertook a parallel analysis in June, and while he finds some similarities, he argues that the Commission may create tri-borough seats, orphan wards and the crossing of the boundaries of […]
Take care when assessing the impact of boundary changes on the next election, cautions Lewis Baston When the Boundary Commission for England published its initial proposals earlier this month, there was a lot of information to absorb quickly. Some aficionados and anoraks (including myself) were intrigued by how they approached the task and phenomena like cross-county […]
Posted on 23 April 2012
PREVIOUS: Conscience and power I’m an election analyst, so I love maps and numbers. They are also in my comfort zone, particularly in a situation like this one where emotions run high. I am moved when I meet someone who has suffered injustice, as I was when I saw Omar’s Kafkaesque situation at Al-Walajah yesterday, […] Continue Reading
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Posted on 10 April 2012
Yad Vashem is more than a museum. Physically, it reminded me of a campus university, set on a forested hillside on the edge of Jerusalem, and it is of course a centre of scholarship on the Holocaust as well as a museum, national shrine and place of pilgrimage. I had a brief, damp, wander around […] Continue Reading
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Posted on 03 April 2012
Immigration officers the world over have a reputation for humourlessness and prickliness and grumpiness, but Israeli border control is often regarded as distilling these qualities to the ultimate degree. My own experience, however, was reasonably straightforward. The only slight glitch was the presence of a Malaysian entry stamp in my passport, about which the Israeli […] Continue Reading
Comments Off on ARRIVAL IN ISRAEL, TRANSIT TO EAST JERUSALEM (Saturday 4 February)
Posted on 08 August 2012
David Cameron has once again cheekily invoked the Chartist democracy movement from the 1830s and 1840s as a justification for his government’s boundary changes. The Chartists did indeed demand equal constituencies, but there was no banner at Kennington in 1848 reading ‘Equal constituencies for all! No variation of more than 5 per cent in registered […] Continue Reading
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Posted on 06 August 2012
What does the shelving of the boundary review mean for David Cameron’s chances of forming a majority Conservative government at the 2015 election? We are told that the Conservatives had pinned great hopes on their proposal to change the way in which parliamentary constituency boundaries are drawn; Cameron is said to have told MPs that […] Continue Reading
Comments Off on First thoughts on cancelling the boundary changes
Posted on 12 June 2012
Local election results – England and Wales The 2012 local elections, leaving the London mayoralty aside, were a considerable success for Labour. While in 2011 Labour did very well in the big urban areas and not so well elsewhere, in 2012 Labour advanced pretty much everywhere that the party is a viable proposition, including such […] Continue Reading
Comments Off on LOCAL ELECTIONS 2012 IN RETROSPECT
Posted on 03 May 2012
Or… which councils’ websites should you have open as browser tabs by 11pm on Thursday 3 May? The local election polls close at 10pm on Thursday, but in contrast to the general election in 2010, a large number of counts are starting on the Friday morning. This is probably sensible from the point […] Continue Reading
Comments Off on Ten wards to watch on election night
Posted on 02 May 2012
  How should we assess the local election results when we have a sense of things on Friday morning? The gains/ losses figures are the most popular measure as far as the media is concerned, because perhaps the best and most comparable measure – National Equivalent Vote share – is complex to calculate and can […] Continue Reading
Comments Off on Local elections 2012: what will the gains and losses figures mean?