What does the Rochester & Strood by-election mean for British politics?

UKIP’s victory in the Rochester & Strood by-election gives the party national credibility, writes Paul Whiteley, and their recent increase in membership gives them the ability to effectively target key seats in the constituency campaigns in the general election. Electorally speaking, however, the division on the right is much more significant than the division on the left, even if UKIP is winning discontented working class voters to their cause

How accurate are the polls when forecasting election outcomes well into the future?

Paul Whiteley correlates Labour and Conservative vote intentions data with the actual polling day results in all UK general elections since 1945. Among his findings is the fact that the Conservative vote share consistently appears to be more predictable than that of Labour, suggesting that Labour support is more volatile than Conservative support

Why a resurgence of democracy around the world would greatly help in the battle against climate change

Paul Whiteley highlights the link between a country’s wealth and democratic status and its CO2 emissions

Representative samples are an issue for the pollsters – but so are respondents who lie

The British Polling Council recently published their report about what went wrong with the polls in the 2015 general election. The report dismissed problems associated with voter registration, question wording, postal voting and mode of interviewing and opted for unrepresentative samples as the key factor in explaining what happened. Here, Paul Whiteley and Harold Clarke make the case for examining another factor: respondents who don’t tell the truth

How do the Scots achieve independence given the volatility in voters’ attitudes?

Paul Whiteley and Harold Clarke explain recent changes in the patterns of support for Scottish independence. On the one hand, the financial and mental health implications of the pandemic have increased support for independence, as people want things to change. On the other hand, a number of recent developments have led to an upsurge in Britons thinking that the UK was right to leave the EU, which in turn helps to explain the loss of support for independence

Critical thinking/questioning skills a meta-model for cognitive development in management education

The paper presents a model for the critical questioning of organisational practices and theories. P.A.T.P. represents PHILOSOPHY, ASSUMPTIONS, THEORY AND PRACTICES. The aim is to develop skills of questioning through three levels. The first level is Interesting. The second level is Important. The third level is Critical. The paper presents the model using two contrasting philosophies of organisation, as expounded by F W Taylor and Stephen Covey. The paper presents the educational setting of MBA seminar, a series of presentations by international and professional experts. Following each presented seminar is the Critical Questioning Session. The student co-author presents the student learning process through two case examples. He applies the approach outside of the MBA seminar setting, showing an extension of his learning. As a meta-model, the application should span cultures and disciplines with the aim of making sense of rather than adding on

Vulnerable Americans rally around a president in a crisis. but polarization means this hasn’t happened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Historically in times of crisis, presidents experience a polling boost as Americans ‘rally around the flag’, but this has not been the case during President Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In new analysis, Harold Clarke, Marianne Stewart and Paul Whiteley find that the massive partisan and ideological differences in the electorate meant that the expected spike in Trump’s support did not occur – especially among the most vulnerable, who would ordinarily be more likely to rally around the president

Leave was always in the lead: why the polls got the referendum result wrong

By analysing 121 opinion polls, Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin, and Paul Whiteley outline what happened with the EU referendum survey results. They explain why internet surveys performed substantially better than telephone ones – contrary to the post-2015 General Election ‘wisdom’ that telephone surveys should be preferred. Underlying trends showed that once methodological artefacts are controlled, Leave was almost certainly ahead of Remain over the entire last month of the campaign – and possibly throughout 2016