The voting behaviour of specific demographic groups: there are lots of ways in which voters can be categorized, but different demographic groupings are of particular interest to us. James Sloam, Kaat Smets and Chris Prosser have all examined turnout rates amongst young people (variously defined). Oliver Heath has looked at working class voters’ choice of political party. Chris Hanretty has looked at how the demographic make-up of constituencies affects public opinion in those areas.
Policy responsiveness and representation: we study policies in a wide range of democratic systems: from education policy in the United States and budgetary policy in the EU, to cultural and environmental policies in London and Lisbon. We’re particularly interested in how processes of representation work when facing legal or financial pressures.
Good parliaments and good politicians: it’s right to hold politicians to high standards, but to do that we need to make sure those standards are clearly articulated, and whether politicians and political institutions fall short. Sarah Childs has set out what a good parliament looks like, and Nick Allen has investigated what different publics actually expect and want from their politicians.
Campaigning and media portrayals of politics: to understand electoral behaviour we need to understand how parties or other groups campaigned, and how the media reported on campaigns and policy proposals. Researchers in the centre like Sofia Collignon and Joost van Spanje work on these areas and are affiliated both with the Democracy and Elections Centre and the New Political Communications Unit newpolcom.
Our research work also involves providing public goods to the broader research community through:
National election studies: Chris Prosser is co-Investigator on the British Election Study; Chris Hanretty is co-Investigator on the Scottish Election Study.
Editorial contributions: Oliver Heath and Kaat Smets are editors-in-chief of Electoral Studies, the leading journal in the subfield.