The general election in the UK, May 2005

At the 2005 general election in the UK, held on 5 May, the Labour Party won an historically unprecedented third victory in a row, and, correspondingly, the Conservative Party suffered its third defeat in a row. In total, 62 seats changed hands, and, as all three major parties experienced both some success and some failure, the election results were curiously ambivalent

The electoral effectiveness of constituency campaigning in the 2010 British General Election: The ‘triumph’ of Labour?

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Electoral Studies. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.This article establishes a model of likely campaign effectiveness, before examining the intensity of constituency campaigning at the 2010 general election in Britain and its subsequent impact on electoral outcomes, using both aggregate and individual level data. It shows that constituency campaigning yielded benefits in varying degrees for all three main parties and that Labour’s constituency campaign efforts were effective despite the electoral context, and ultimately affected the overall outcome of the election. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the circumstances under which campaigns are likely to be more or less effective, and provide further evidence that a carefully managed campaign stands the most chance of delivering tangible electoral payoffs

How to experimentally measure the number 5 of the SO(5) theory?

According to Wilson's theory of critical phenomena, critical exponents are universal functions of $d$, the dimension of space, and $n$, the dimension of the symmetry group. SO(5) theory of antiferromagnetism and superconductivity predicts a bicritical point where $T_N$ and $T_c$ intersect. By measuring critical exponents close to the bicritical point, and knowing that $d=3$, one can experimentally measure the number 5 of the SO(5) theory.Comment: Invited talk at the M2S conference in Housto

On the Surface Pressure for the Edwards-Anderson Model

For the Edwards-Anderson model we introduce an integral representation for the surface pressure (per unit surface) in terms of a quenched moment of the bond-overlap on the surface. We find upper and lower bounds uniformly in the volume and show that at high temperature its value is strictly different from zero.Comment: Minor changes. To appear in Commun. Math. Phy

Next Step: State Funding for the Parties?

The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 marked the most comprehensive and radical overhaul of British party finance for over 100 years. It instituted reforms in many areas, with the notable exception of the comprehensive extension of state funding for political parties. However, despite the radicalism of the Act, questions have already arisen as to whether further state funding should occur. This article argues that in order to examine the case for more comprehensive state funding, policy–makers need to look beyond the current calls and make a decision by evaluating several criteria on the basis of empirical evidence rather than assumptions. First, however, it is worth outlining the stage we are at presently by summarising the new Act, looking at its impact to date and examining the claims made in recent episodes which have led to calls for more comprehensive state funding of political parties