New report: What should we do about mayoral scrutiny? www.mysociety.org/2025/11/18/m...

Imagine having a thumping majority in parliament and deciding to use it for something as squalid as this.

The UK outright engaged in stationary banditry, stealing from the poor to give to the rich, all in order to appease the most petty xenophobe bigots on earth. And I feel sure it won't even work on the Home Secretary's terms, ultimately all this will strengthen not weaken Reform.

It becomes overly clear why #MeToo was considered such a threat by powerful men and why they have done everything to mock and discredit it.

🚨 NEW in @bjpols.bsky.social : When Partygate hit Westminster, trust in Scottish politicians increased. Our experiments reveal a "contrast effect" - scandals at one level can make the other look better by comparison. Who lost most trust in Westminster? Scottish unionists. Read now #OpenAccess 👇

"While testing one dimension at a time can yield simple results, those effects may not generalise to richer, real-world contexts." Read our new POAL Methods Briefs on Conjoint Experiments from Thomas Robinson! Link: www.poal.co.uk/research/met...

📄 New WP version out - full overhaul! The Politics of Evidence Selection (w/ @jesperasring.bsky.social ) Comments welcome! 🔗 osf.io/preprints/so...

The crucial bit of this tactical 'only Labour or Reform can win here' VI poll, though, is that Labour and Reform would be tied. Not enough Lib Dem or Green voters are (right now) prepared to tactically vote for Labour to offset the number of Tories willing to tactically vote for Reform.

🚨 EPSS Belfast 2026 Call for Papers - One week to go! 🚨 Don't forget to submit your paper or panel proposal to the European Political Science Society @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 conference - just one week to go before the deadline: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

Sticking it to the man by only taking treatment when assigned to control and vice versa

This is absolutely fascinating: you can put your postcode in and see relative levels of deprivation (and the opposite) where you live in detail. I live where I grew up, so I could spend days doing this as I know the town so well. www.ft.com/content/9a1c... Huge congrats to @amyborrett.ft.com et al.

If Greens start consistently leading Labour in polls, and beating them in local elections then the logic of tactical voting which Labour has been relying on could flip savagely on them. As Caerphilly by-election shows, "Only Labour can beat Reform" doesn't work if voters know it isn't true.

It's increasingly obvious that Labour's strategy - call it Starmerism, Blue Labour, whatever - has got it badly wrong. It has alienated the party's core vote while failing to win over those leaning to Reform. There was no shortage of people warning them they were getting it wrong either.

There were emotional scenes at the Cardiff City Stadium as Jess Fishlock played her final game for Wales

THE END OF AN ERA Welsh footballing legend Jess Fishlock has played her final match for her country. She leaves the pitch as Wales’ most capped player with 166 caps & 48 goals. Congrats on an incredible career Jess 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 👏

Oh England 🥲 #ENGBRA

I ran a simulated social media experiment with 1450 Republicans to test different fact-checking interventions. AI produced the largest decrease in engagement with Trump misinformation, outperforming independent fact-checkers and doing so far more consistently than Community Notes.

Matching designs be like... @antonkoenneke.de

"AI fact-checks may be the best way to reduce Republicans’ engagement with online political misinformation" by @isoldehegemann.bsky.social blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20...

📰 "The Two Psychological Biases to Avoid to Understand Voting Behaviour in 2025" open.substack.com/pub/jamesbre...

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Nano-targeting is not a persuasive weapon: it is a dissuasion and polarization weapon. New paper out osf.io/preprints/so... with the brilliant Thomas Robinson, @simonhix.bsky.social and @fresejoris.bsky.social – the first to quantify the perverse incentives/inherent democratic dangers of this tech.

New office art dropped

Going through some history of climate politics notes from last week, I realize we dont appreciate enough the climate mobilization of mid2010s and subsequent electoral green wave of late 2010s. That moment was never really meant to be in the cards and we need to better study how we got there 🪡 1/n

📽 Thought I'd share some YouTube channels that are nice for people teaching or learning stats in social science research ⬇ Would also be really interested to hear what others watch/recommend!

There's a common view that MPs are out of touch with the public. The Privilege & Participation Survey asked when people think MPs lose touch: privilegeandparticipation.org/2022/01/12/s... Takeaway: Almost 1/2 say it's after being elected but almost 2/5 say it's before. #PrivilegeandParticipation

I did some quick analysis of who has been signing the e-petition against digital ID and the results are interesting. Nothing very surprising when comparing signatures per constituency with share voting Reform in 2024. The picture for Labour is a bit more troubling…

Maybe those 3% are responding to 30 surveys at the same time 😉 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Equally cool and informative from a substantive and methodological perspective!

Very happy to be able to share the polling-level dataset on Indian Parliamentary Elections 2009, 2014, 2019 that we have been working on for more than a decade. Both the data and the data descriptor are open access: rdcu.be/eujHH @statsvitenskap.bsky.social @unioslo-svfak.bsky.social

ESRC-funded PhD @lsegovernment.bsky.social × Campaign Lab: New Ways to Think Political Persuasion (start Sep 2026, 3.5 yrs) Methods-heavy (experiments/computation) Topics: multi-stage persuasion, interpersonal mechanisms, AI–voter interactions 📅Apply by 10 Dec 2025: www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

I made a little R package to handle the faff of assigning party names to party colours when making plots about British elections in ggplot. I made it for myself, but if you're someone that also works on British politics and uses R, you might also find it useful! github.com/drcaprosser/...

Great opportunity if you’re interested in pursuing a PhD in political science at @lsegovernment.bsky.social - with a particular interest in elections and campaigning ⬇️

Could not recommend this highly enough - LSE is a great place to be doing a PhD, and Campaign Lab are a fantastic organisation to collaborate with - More than happy to talk to anyone thinking of applying!

🚨 We have a cool new ESRC PhD studentship opportunity on the topic of political persuasion for someone interested in campaigning, field experiments and/or computational methods @lsegovernment.bsky.social, in collaboration with @campaign-lab.bsky.social. All info 👇 www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

Anyone remembers the panic in 2023 because Labour lost a by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip over ULEZ expansion, and the pressure Khan was under to axe his climate/air quality policies? Feels like a decade ago now.

Can someone ask Farage or Zia Yusuf why, if they're so concerned about incitement to violence, they had Lucy Connolly as a guest star at their conference?

Labour have been on the attack, branding Reform UK policies "racist" . A new YouGov poll for @itvpeston.bsky.social examines what Britons think % saying Reform UK... policies are generally racist: 46% (net +10) party is generally racist: 47% (net +11) voters are generally racist: 43% (net +8)

I hope Starmer doesn’t retreat from the tone he struck yesterday. Lesson from the U.S.: the far right will accuse you of everything they already do. The shamelessness IS a tactic. Biden simply retreated from engaging. But people need to keep hearing a version of what starmer said. Every Single Day.

People often claim it's a mistake to call far-right figures racist. But it's extremely telling how much they hate being called racist. Farage doesn't welcome it. He is afraid of it. And he has benefited from people's reticence about using it to describe his policies.

I wonder how large the gap between people's perceptions of these descriptive norms and reality is, given the huge amount of attention Reform has got from the media and other party leaders

Public views of Reform,July 2024 Need to do more to keep out candidates with racist views: 64% to 9% (+55) Risk bringing prejudice to immigration debate 51% to 20% (+31) Say things they shouldn't say 45% to 24% (+21) Mainly dangerous + divisive 43% to 28% (+15) Racist 41% to 30% 29% on fence

At the Campaign Fringe by @campaign-lab.bsky.social today - If you're in Liverpool today, make sure to drop by to meet some amazing campaigners and chat about what works in campaigning! It's at Camp & Furnace (outside the main conference area) so you do not need a pass to come luma.com/rpu1av03

Me today with back-to-back Arsenal then England rugby 🥳 🌹

For the Guardian, @turnbulldugarte.com and I discuss our research that clearly shows one thing: Labour's anti-immigration strategy will only strengthen Reform and weaken its own electoral prospects. It won't win voters back but ultimately normalizes the far right www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Check out the full programme of the Campaign Fringe at #Lab25 to plan the best way to spend the day 🔗 mailchi.mp/fc4c936052a8... Dont forget to sign up today 📍 Camp and Furnace: L1 0BY 🕛 29th September: 11:00 - 19:00 🔗 luma.com/rpu1av03

Thank you to those who joined us for our Labour for Trans Rights campaign day with one of our top allies in Parliament, @alexsobel.co.uk 🏳️‍⚧️

We estimate that Donald Trump's approval rating is negative among 2024 voters in eight states that voted for him in November: Texas -1 Arizona -3 Pennsylvania -6 Nevada -6 North Carolina -7 Georgia -10 Wisconsin -11 Michigan -11

Imagine you're in a weird romcom where Paul Hollywood is your rival. Do you go "let's have a bread baking competition" or do you emphasise your own relative strengths? Because that in short has been the central problem with the traditional two's approach to anti-immigration voters and Reform UK.