British Election Research Articles

The influence of coordinated behavior on toxicity

In the intricate landscape of social media, genuine content dissemination may be altered by a number of threats. Coordinated Behavior (CB), defined as orchestrated efforts by entities to deceive or mislead users about their identity and intentions, emerges as a tactic to exploit or manipulate online discourse. This study delves into the relationship between CB and toxic conversation on X (formerly known as Twitter). Using a dataset of 11 million tweets from 1 million users preceding the 2019 UK general election, we show that users displaying CB typically disseminate less harmful content, irrespective of political affiliation. However, distinct toxicity patterns emerge among different coordinated cohorts. Compared to their non-CB counterparts, CB participants show marginally higher toxicity levels only when considering their original posts. We further show the effects of CB-driven toxic content on non-CB users, gauging its impact based on political leanings. Our findings suggest that CB only has a limited impact on the toxicity of digital discourse.

Using social media to communicate competence, ordinariness, and authenticity in political leadership

Abstract Understanding how political leaders use social media during election campaigns is a growing area of research, with existing literature focussing on single-election examinations of platform usage (Smith 2021). This paper instead conducts a longitudinal examination of political leadership on Twitter/X at the 2015, 2017, and 2019 UK general elections, focussing on the different ways in which leaders portray their competence, ordinariness, and authenticity. In analysing 2,694 posts during the short campaign period by the various leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish National Party, enables the examination of both changing social media behaviours and individual constructions of leadership under the same party label.

Potential impact of the 2024 UK Parliamentary Elections: the long shadow of Brexit

Potential impact of the 2024 UK Parliamentary Elections: the long shadow of Brexit

Rational voting behaviour accounting for heterogeneous ballots in British elections

Rational voting behaviour accounting for heterogeneous ballots in British elections

Gender, Religion, and Political Violence: Lessons from Muslim Women’s Experiences in UK Elections

Abstract Violence against women in politics is on the rise, threatening political achievements with respect to equality. Little research, however, has been conducted on the experiences of women from minority communities. This article, therefore, takes an intersectional approach to explore how gender, religion, and other categories of difference intersect when it comes to Muslim women’s experiences in the UK. Based on a longitudinal case study of Bradford West during the 2015, 2017, and 2019 general elections that combines participant observations, qualitative interviews, and a Twitter analysis, we argue that, in addition to the violence often experienced by women, Muslim women are also confronted with Islamophobic bias and abuse, as well as intersectional intimidation and harassment from within the Muslim community in their constituencies. Our case study approach, however, also reveals the existence of appreciation and support for Muslim women in politics that needs to be nurtured to counter abuse.

Individual Electoral Competitiveness: Undecided voters, complex choice environments and lower turnout

The number of citizens that are undecided in their vote choice has risen in Western democracies. Polling in Britain shows that a significant proportion of the population do not know who they will vote for. Against a backdrop of partisan dealignment and party system fragmentation, there are more parties on the ballot and more citizens ‘free to choose’. Partisanship continues to be important for voting and lacking an identity is a predictor of aggregate voter volatility. A growing literature conceptualises this availability of voters as individual-level electoral competitiveness, stating that undecided citizens are subject to high levels of competition for their vote. I use this framework and apply theory from the decisionmaking literature to offer why these conditions may depress turnout. I construct a measure of undecided voters who are ‘in competition’ and show that this accounts for 40% of the British Election Study Internet Panel respondents. I demonstrate that those who are in competition are less likely to vote. They are more often those without a partisan identity and those who pay less attention to politics, but being in competition is not related to constituency marginality. The results help explain a key determinant of abstention in British elections and suggest low levels of participation may be due to complex choice environments and citizen indecision. However, they provide a positive outlook for pluralistic democracy as voters do deliberate between the party perspectives on offer.

Planning and party manifestos in recent UK general elections

In a democracy, a commonly held idea is that political parties present their programmes for government before elections so that people know what they are voting for. It is then often held that governments should follow what they have said, when in government. These programmes may take several forms, but the most common one is the party manifesto. Here the aim is to consider how planning elements have figured in manifestos. Manifestos are surveyed from the four UK general elections 2010–2019, concentrating on those of the Conservative and Labour parties. How far did planning figure in manifestos? Were there big differences between parties and elections? To what extent did a winning party follow its manifesto? Manifestos tread a complicated line between clear ideological statements and more immediately tuned electoral political considerations. Some implications are drawn out for how planning actors may relate to manifestos in the future.

Platform speech: Journalists and political campaigners reflect on Facebook and disintermediation in three UK general elections

Platform speech: Journalists and political campaigners reflect on Facebook and disintermediation in three UK general elections

Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election

Candidate selections are seen as the ‘secret garden’ of UK politics. Hundreds of parliamentary constituencies rarely change hands, meaning that the ‘real election’ is the incumbent party’s selection process. Yet scholarship into candidate selection in the United Kingdom remains limited. In this article, we build a novel dataset of known shortlisted candidates in winnable seats to offer the first cross-party analysis of who gets shortlisted, and what factors influence success among shortlisted candidates. We find that shortlisted female and ethnic minority candidates are still less likely to be selected as parliamentary candidates, while living locally is by far the most significant factor affecting selection success. However, the nature of the 2019 snap election allowed parties to use emergency powers to advantage party insiders in late selections. We further find that, contrary to media focus, party faction was not a significant factor in Conservative or Labour Party selections.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on support for the SNP and Scottish independence

ABSTRACT The retrospective model of voting holds that parties are elected based on their perceived competence in government and punished for incompetence. This theory is complicated in contexts of multilevel governance as it requires attributing responsibility to a particular party in a particular level of government. This paper tests the extent to which this model explains public opinion in a multilevel context (Scotland) on a high-stakes valence issue (the coronavirus pandemic). Using British Election Study Internet Panel data from 2019 to 2021, it assesses how the public responded to the perceived competence of the Scottish Government and British Government. The results find that for each Government those voters who rated their handling of the pandemic more highly increased their liking of the governing party and its leader. Further, those voters who thought a Government had performed well were more likely to switch towards supporting the party in power, but this depended on how much they previously liked that party. Similarly, increases in support for Scottish independence from the UK came from those voters who not only judged the Scottish Government to have handled the pandemic well, but also previously liked the SNP prior to the pandemic.

Is there a rural-urban political divide in Britain?

ABSTRACT A rural-urban political divide, characterized by rural mistrust in politics, dissatisfaction with democracy, and support for authoritarian-populist leaders and parties, has been identified in many Western democracies. Yet there has been little investigation of the extent to which British public opinion is divided in this fashion. Using British Election Study data from 2016 and 2019 that combines large samples with finely-grained geographic identifiers, this paper investigates the possible presence and extent of a rural-urban divide in British political attitudes and values. We find that while rural Britons are more conservative on economic issues, and more supportive of the Conservative party than urbanites, the two groups have comparable levels of democratic satisfaction, political trust, and authoritarianism. As such, unlike in other Western democracies, we do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied, or “left-behind” compared to their urban counterparts.

Exclusion-politicization: Salafism, democracy, and counterpublic politics in the UK

ABSTRACT This article examines the politicization of Salafism in the UK over the past two decades – shedding light on why and how some Salafi actors, particularly those belonging to Haitham al-Haddad’s network, are increasingly engaging in formal and informal political activities rather than da’wa (missionary work). It is based on more than 70 interviews with British Salafis and 20 months of participant observation within Salafi communities in London between 2017 and 2020, as well as content analysis of Salafi websites and social media. It argues that owing to increased exclusion and marginalization of British Muslims within the British public sphere, some Salafis have begun to organize protests, vote in UK elections, campaign, wage legal battles, and contest the marginalization of British Muslims through the production of counterhegemonic discourses. It draws on counterpublic theory to explain how exclusion from the public sphere can lead to greater political activity by highlighting how counterpublics enable marginalized communities to regroup and train for agitational activities. This article contributes to our understanding of the causes and consequences of the politicization of Salafi actors in European Muslim-minority contexts, as well as to our understanding of the politicization of religious actors more generally.

Authoritarianism, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice: A Longitudinal Analysis of the British Electorate

Authoritarianism, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice: A Longitudinal Analysis of the British Electorate

Connecting Local Economic Decline to the Politics of Geographic Discontent: The Missing Link of Perceptions

AbstractLocal economic decline has been presented as an explanation for populism, political alienation and geographic polarisation. This approach risks underestimating the complexity of observing local economic decline. Using original survey questions in the British Election Study, we theorise five models to explain who is likely to perceive local economic decline, and why. Using linked objective data, we analyse the relationship of perceptions to existing economic indicators, finding correspondence but also substantial and systematic variation driven by partisanship and heuristics, such as declining personal circumstances. These findings suggest that researchers should not equate objectively measured decline with homogeneous or direct effects of the local economy on vote choice, populist leanings, and localised discontent. There is value in establishing how voters reason about economic decline to both explain their choices and the way they are likely to respond to remedial policy measures.

Agency and structure in the age of European disintegration

This article analyses the causal factors behind the Brexit vote, aiming to contribute to the literature on European disintegration. It addresses how, amidst external factors such as the EU debt crisis and the 2015 refugee crisis, pre-existing ideological forces deeply ingrained in a society can surface and steer a country's trajectory in relation to European integration. Employing a rigorous process-tracing design, it highlights the forces that led to the referendum and its outcome, identifying key patterns that can be extrapolated to comparable cases within the field of EU integration theory. The analysis operates at two levels: it scrutinizes the constraints faced by Cameron's government in the lead-up to the vote, and it probes the British electorate's attitude toward EU and how it was influenced by the Leave campaign. The study draws from an empirical case to identify some of the patterns of this ongoing political process.

The UK general election results: the effects on health care and what this means for social care

Adrian Ashurst and Lisa Morgan discuss the impact of the recent Labour landslide election result.

UK general election: five reasons it matters for science.

UK general election: five reasons it matters for science.

Who are the doctors standing as MPs in the UK general election?

Who are the doctors standing as MPs in the UK general election?

Mental health and the ballot box: A correlational analysis of Google searches for mental health and national election periods in the United States and the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2020.

In electoral contexts, mental health topics have recently attracted sociopolitical relevance, influenced by policy developments, election-related psychopathology and popular discourse about individual candidates. Yet, whether this reflects generalised trends or is contingent on election-specific and contextual factors remains difficult to ascertain. This study sought to examine correlations between Google Trends (GT) data on mental health and four national elections in the US and the UK from 2008 to 2020. This was intended to yield preliminary insights into the relevance of mental health topics amongst voters and the potential impact of electoral cycles on patterns of online engagement with these issues. Monthly and daily Search Volume Indexes (SVI) were gathered from the 'Mental Health' category on GT in the US and UK from 2008 to 2023. SVI were evaluated around the past four national ballots, comparing election-year intervals and baseline data from the preceding year. Statistical tests were conducted to assess SVI and short- and long-term dynamics. The results showed heterogeneous SVI patterns related to mental health during elections in the US and the UK. In the US, there were statistically significant SVI increases proximal to the majority of elections as compared to data in the same calendar year, but these did not typically exceed baseline SVI. However, interestingly, divisive US contests showed correlations with several elevated SVI measures in the same and previous years. Conversely, there was a lack of consistent longitudinal trends in UK elections, perhaps informed by its disparate sociopolitical landscape. These findings underline the composite relationship between electoral politics and popular engagement with mental health topics around national votes, suggesting that this is driven more by situational factors rather than a recurrent electoral effect or signs of burgeoning engagement. Detailed research is required to understand the nuances and causality behind these dynamics and their wider implications.

Voted in, standing out: Public response to immigrants' political accession

AbstractHow do dominant‐group natives react to immigrants' political integration? We argue that ethnic minority immigrants winning political office makes natives feel threatened, triggering animosity. We test this dynamic across the 2010–2019 UK general elections, using hate crime police records, public opinion data, and text data from over 500,000 regional and local newspaper articles. While past work has not established a causal relationship between minorities' political power gains and dominant‐group animosity, we identify natives' hostile reactions with a regression discontinuity design that leverages close election results between immigrant‐origin ethnic minority and dominant‐group candidates. We find that minority victories increase hate crimes by 67%, exclusionary attitudes by 66%, and negative media coverage of immigrant groups by 110%. Consistent with power threat and social identity theories, these findings demonstrate a strong and widespread negative reaction—encompassing a violence‐prone fringe and the mass public—against ethnic minority immigrants' integration into majority settings.