It seems like calls for evidence on pluralism are ten-a-penny these days. Here are some submissions that I’ve done with wonderful colleagues from UEA, Shaun Hargreaves-Heap, Michael Harker, John Street, and Daithí Mac Sithígh.
Submission to Ofcom on media plurality
Submission to the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport
I’ve missed out on this year’s PSA, but in my defence I’ve been hard at work.
I’ve just finished a very preliminary draft of a paper on the Labour leadership elections. It draws on the same data I noted earlier.
The abstract is as follows:
I analyse the preference data of Labour MPs and MEPs in [...]
Just noticed there’s a new Betfair market on the AV referendum. Taking account of the overbook, the implied probabilities are as follows:
Yes victory: 48.8%
No victory: 51.2%
Or in other words, pretty even.
The LibCon coalition’s first mistake (excepting any original sin) seems to be requiring a supermajority of 55% for motions of no confidence motions of no confidence leading to dissolution. There’s already a protest group.
Andrew Rudalevige explains the significance of 55% very succinctly at the Monkey Cage. (I’m not aware of any other supermajority requirements in [...]
Geektastic discussion at PoliticsHome.
The election result in the UK was astonishingly close the results predicted by the BBC/Sky exit poll, with the Conservatives at 307, somewhat short of a majority.
I don’t know what this means for arcane debates about uniform versus proportional swing; the swings during the night were all over the place. It’s possible that uniform national [...]
Is here. It’s a Ford-Jennings-Pickup-Wlezien coproduction.
Okay, so uniform national swing doesn’t really work, but just to note that it’s possible to plug in numbers (33:32:26 LD:Con:Lab) from some recent polls, and have Lib Dem > Con > Lab in vote share, but Lab > Con > LibDem in seat share. Messy.
The UK government establish an independent body to give it advice on drugs policy which it could then ignore. Now they’ve gone and fired the head of the body. Of course, because the machinery of British government functions on blu-tack and sticky-back plastic, the minister hasn’t used any formal powers, but has merely “invited” the [...]
Interesting blog post from Michael Crick on differences in how the UK Electoral Commission treats donations to the LibDems and UKIP, suggesting that the former are favoured relative to the latter, other things being equal. Question is what’s the causal link between a given political party having more elected representatives and receiving more favourable treatment [...]