The challenge of combined elections
Local electoral administrators, unsung heroes of democracy, have become used to conducting combined elections in recent years. But May 2021 will present many of them in England with their biggest challenge yet.
Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher
Tackling low turnout
Low and declining turnout is a long-running feature of local elections in the UK. Indeed, the gap in turnout with parliamentary elections is one of the largest among liberal democracies.
The right time for remote voting?
The pandemic has concentrated attention across the world on the philosophy and practice of remote voting.
The councils prone to by-elections
What factors influence the frequency of by-elections, and are some councils more prone than others to having to fill casual vacancies?
May’s local elections – who would have won?
We will never know, of course, but the Conservatives could have been celebrating their best local election results for nearly three decades.
Measuring electoral volatility
We begin with two questions. First, considering council by-elections since 1983, which year has seen the largest proportion of seats changing hands – in other words, the greatest electoral volatility? …
Local party successes
Labour’s newly elected Councillor Gurdev Singh Hayre will probably be the last to succeed in a council by-election for quite some time.