Archive for turnout
A very clever Get Out The Vote film
From Tunisia, via Benedict Pringle, who explains: The equivalent of the electoral commission decided to restore a giant poster of the former dictator that used to be a landmark of a suburban area of Tunis. Passers-by are astounded and seemingly nervous when they see it in the morning, however, soon their stupefaction shifts to anger [...]
Will polling stations start being moved to raise turnout at elections?
Experts who have studied the link between distance to vote and voting levels have submitted written evidence to Parliament's Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, calling for changes in the law to encourage better location of polling stations.
Performance standards for Returning Officers consultation opens
The Electoral Commission is currently consulting on its performance standards for Returning Officers in Great Britain. Here's my response (with the full consultation document embedded below).
What do the academics say? More polling stations can raise turnout
The problem in part is that pretty much everyone involved - politicians, electoral administrators, councillors and the media - have in the past got terribly excited about electoral innovations that come with shiny new technology (especially if you can stick 'e' in front of a word too), whilst much more boring possible ways of raising turnout, such as better poll cards or more polling stations get barely a look in.
A reason to be sceptical of what the public tells opinion pollsters
Much can be learnt from opinion polls, but a reminder of why not all results should be taken at face value is this: If there were local council elections in your area on May 5th, how likely would you be to vote in them, where 0 means you will definitely not vote, and 10 means [...]
The two electoral tests the Coalition should run
If it is serious about wanting to see higher turnout in elections, the government should trial weekend voting and increasing the number of polling stations so people have less far to travel to vote.
What do the academics say? Influencing people to vote
During the 2005-10 Parliament I blogged several times pointing out how the trends in turnout in British elections were more positive than many of the media reports suggested. One reason for this was simply an interest in the gap between the widely accepted clichés in political and media circles about turnout and the reality. The other was [...]
The class dimension to turnout
It’s been a long established pattern of British politics that the higher you go up the social scale, the higher turnout is in elections. The 2010 general election is no exception but looking through the numbers one class dimension comes out. Overall turnout collapsed after 1997 and has since had a modest recovery, but the [...]
Scope calls for online voting to assist disabled voters
Online voting should be introduced to assist disabled voters after access to polling stations failed to improve for this year's election, a charity said.
An electoral problem
The following data is from MORI’s aggregate polling 6 April – 6 May and shows how levels of Liberal Democrat support and turnout varied across different age groups: This problem isn’t new to the 2010 general election, though the pattern was less neat in 2005. It does raise an interesting question for the party’s get [...]
