Pretty faces, marginal races: predicting election outcomes using trait assessments of British Parliamentary candidates

The conventional wisdom on Western European politics leads us to believe that all the “action” lies with parties, because the unified parliamentary delegations in Western Europe draw voters’ attention to parties’ policies and images. Though British elections take place under a single member district plurality system, British parties, like their continental counterparts, are highly centralised and feature disciplined parliamentary delegations. Despite the strong ties between British candidates and their parties, we demonstrate that perceptions of candidates’ personal at-tributes can be used to predict general election outcomes. Using a computer-based survey where subjects are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we successfully predict outcomes from the 2010 general election. Moreover, we find that perceptions of candidates’ relative attractiveness are particularly useful for predicting outcomes in marginal constituencies

Election leaflets suggest campaigns have become less rather than more personalised

The personal characteristics of political elites play an important role in British elections. Caitlin Milazzo and Siim Trumm discuss how candidates’ attributes feature in general election leaflets using data from the OpenElections project

The 2016 EU Referendum: Explaining Support for Brexit Among Would-Be British MPs

The outcome of the 2016 referendum on European Union membership took many by surprise and has continued to define the political discourse in Britain. Despite there being a growing body of research focused on explaining how voters cast their ballot, we still know little about what motivated our politicians to do the same. In this article, we draw on individual-level survey data from the British Representation Study to explore support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates who stood at the 2017 general election. We find that candidates' political views on immigration and democracy were key determinants of their decision to vote Leave. In addition, more optimistic views of how Brexit was expected to impact British economy and democracy are associated with greater likelihood of voting Leave. These findings highlight that, while politicians were less likely than voters to support Brexit overall, their motivations for doing so were quite similar. Interestingly, however, we also find that candidates contesting constituencies with higher Leave support were no more likely to vote for Brexit themselves. Taken together, these findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences on the issue of Brexit

Explaining support for Brexit among would-be MPs in the 2017 general election

Siim Trumm, Caitlin Milazzo, and Joshua Townsley use survey data to explore support for Brexit among 2017 parliamentary candidates. The findings reveal some interesting insights into politicians’ motivations for supporting Brexit. For example, candidates standing in seats with higher Leave support were not significantly more likely to vote Leave themselves. Instead, candidates’ views on immigration and democracy stand out as key determinants of their decision to vote Leave

OpenElections: introducing the largest collection of British election communications in existence

Election leaflets play a central role in general election campaigns. They provide prospective voters with important information ahead of elections and tell them what political parties – and their candidates – stand for. However, as campaigns increasingly tailor their messages to specific voters in specific constituencies, it is difficult to get a broader sense of ... Continue

Going on the offensive: Negative messaging in British general elections

What drives British parliamentary candidates to attack their opponents? Using an original dataset of approximately 7500 general election leaflets from four elections between 2010 and 2019, we offer the first study into the conditions under which British parliamentary candidates use negative messaging. We find that leaflets from opposition candidates and candidates contesting marginal (i.e., competitive) seats are more likely to include messages about their opponent(s), which suggests that candidates respond to the incentives and pressures that come from both their local and national environment when determining whether to include negative messaging in their leaflets. Moreover, we find that, as seats become more marginal, candidates from government parties become just as likely as opposition parties to engage in negative messaging, and therefore, voters in marginal seats are likely to experience more negative campaigns than those residing in seats where the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Taken together, our findings make an important contribution to the growing body of literature that explores how candidates use negative messaging in party-centred systems

Conceived in Harlesden: Candidate-Centred Campaigning in British General Elections

© 2018 The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved. Recent decades have seen an increasing trend towards the personalisation of election campaigns, even in systems where candidates have few structural incentives to emphasise their personal appeal. In this article, we build on a growing literature that points to the importance of candidate characteristics in determining electoral success. Using a dataset composed of more than 3700 leaflets distributed during the 2015 and 2017 general elections, we explore the conditions under which messages emphasising the personal characteristics of prospective parliamentary candidates appear in British general election campaign materials. Even when we account for party affiliation, we find that there are important contextual and individual-level factors that predict the use of candidate-centred messaging

Resurgent Remain and a Rebooted Revolt on the Right:Exploring the 2019 European Parliament Elections in the United Kingdom

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election took place against the backdrop of the vote for Brexit and the failure of parliament to agree on a withdrawal agreement. Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party topped the poll and the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats, which called for a second referendum on EU membership, returned from electoral obscurity to take second place while other pro-Remain parties similarly performed well. In sharp contrast, the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, recorded their lowest combined vote share since they became the main representatives of the two-party system. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data to explore what happened at the 2019 EP election in Great Britain. Our evidence suggests Labour suffered from a 'pincer movement', losing support in its mainly white, working-class 'left behind' heartlands but also in younger cosmopolitan areas where Labour had polled strongly at the 2017 general election. Support for the new Brexit Party increased more significantly in 'left behind' communities, which had given strong support to Leave at the 2016 referendum, suggesting that national populists capitalised on Labour's woes. The Conservatives haemorrhaged support in affluent, older retirement areas but largely at the expense of the resurgent Liberal Democrats, with the latter surging in Remain areas and where the Conservatives are traditionally strong, though not in areas with younger electorates where the party made so much ground prior to the 2010-2015 coalition government. Lastly, turnout increased overall compared to 2014 but individuals living in Leave areas were less motivated to vote. Overall, our findings suggest that those living in Remain areas were more driven to express their discontent with the Brexit process and more inclined to support parties that offer a second referendum on Britain's EU membership