Elections in Britain
A Voter’s Guide
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23 Result(s)
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Book
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Chapter
When Elections are Held
Apart from the result, the principal uncertainty about a British general election is its timing. Unlike in the USA and the great majority of democratic states outside the Commonwealth, there is no fixed date f...
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Chapter
An Evolving System
In 1254 the Sheriff of each county was ordered to send two knights, chosen by the county, ‘to consider what aid they would give the King in his great necessity’; eleven years later the Parliament summoned by S...
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Chapter
Political Parties: Local
The national organisations of the political parties monopolise publicity in the press and on radio and television, but it is the local branches with which the voter is likely to come into contact. The main par...
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Chapter
Polling Day
When polling day finally arrives the limelight which has shone throughout the preceding weeks on the party leaders and the national campaigns of the parties swings decisively back to the constituencies. In a g...
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Chapter
Introduction
‘The disadvantage of free elections’, V. M. Molotov (the Soviet Foreign Minister in 1946) remarked to Ernest Bevin, ‘is that you can never be sure who is going to win them.’
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Chapter
The Voters
Any British citizen, citizen of any other Commonwealth country or Irish citizen, over the age of 18 and resident in the United Kingdom, with a very few exceptions, is eligible to vote in all elections in Brita...
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Chapter
How Much Does it Cost — and Who Pays For it?
The cost of fighting elections, and the means by which the political parties raise money to pay for it, has become perhaps the most controversial aspect of Britain’s electoral arrangements over the last few ye...
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Chapter
The National Campaign
Seventy or eighty years ago election campaigns were conducted almost exclusively at a constituency level. Apart from organising speaking tours by the party leaders and other prominent personalities, the party ...
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Chapter
By-Elections, Local Elections, Euro-Elections and Referendums
General elections are the most signifi cant and perhaps most exciting elections which take place in Britain, but they are of course by no means the only ones. Every year there are elections to local authoritie...
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Chapter
How People Vote, and Why Some Don’t
The British voter is subjected to a heavy barrage of propaganda from all the major parties — and to occasional salvoes from minor groups and independents — during election campaigns, and to a lesser degree at ...
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Chapter
Constituencies and the Electoral System
The House of Commons has at present 659 members, each of whom is the representative of a single-member constituency.1 The origin of the different constituencies is diverse. Some constituency names, particularly t...
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Chapter
The Campaign in the Constituencies
The announcement by the Prime Minister of an impending general election precipitates a flurry of activity in constituency and local party branches throughout the country. Emergency meetings are hastily convene...
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Chapter
Opinion Polls
Apart from television, the most important new factor which has influenced elections in the post-war period has been the public opinion polls. No politician worth his salt is now ignorant of the latest state of...
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Chapter
Political Parties: National
Political parties are the lifeblood of electoral politics in Britain, as in almost every other democracy in the world. The overwhelming majority of Parliamentary candidates are party adherents, and it is an ex...
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Chapter
Candidates
No special qualifi cations whatever are legally required of Parliamentary candidates; the only positive requirements are virtually those which also apply to voters — that is, to be a British or Commonwealth su...
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Chapter
The Public and the Polls
The pollsters’ chapters in this volume are concerned with the answers to two related questions. What methodology will best achieve our professional function of accurately measuring the opinions and predicting ...
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Chapter
Looking Through the Other End of the Microscope: How the Public Experienced the General Election Campaign
While other chapters in this volume mostly consider the actors in the 2005 General Election, examining how they set about trying to communicate with the voting public or why they did so in the way they did, th...
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Book
Political Communication in Britain
The Leader Debates, the Campaign and the Media in the 2010 General Election
