Elections 2010

Washminster will of course be previewing some of the key races in the UK General Election and the US Congressional Elections which will occur in 2010. It will be an important election year in both countries. There are other countries which will also be going to the polls in coming months. An excellent website has been set up by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems listing national elections, and giving details for each country.

IFES also produces research on issues relating to elections - including a study of Political Finance Regulation around the world. The group which assesses the experience of regulation is available here.

UK OPINION POLLS

For the UK it is possible to track the parties in the Guardian/ICM polls back to 1984 via this link.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

A Happy Thanksgiving Day to you all!

The traditional 'first Thanksgiving' was held by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1621. One place in England particularly associated with the Pilgrim Fathers is Scrooby in Nottinghamshire. It was here that a separatist church was founded whose members were to be the nucleus of the religious group on the Mayflower. It's a lovely village to visit, not far from Doncaster.


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There are a number of websites about the history of the 'pilgrims' in Scrooby and in the surrounding areas. My favourites are -

The Pilgrim Fathers UK Origins Association - which links to a number of interesting pages and
The Scrooby Village website - which has a number of history articles accessed via the left hand side of the page.

L Committee

The Legislation Committee is a Ministerial Committee of the Cabinet - chaired by the Leader of the House of Commons. It's membership is listed here. This committee decides which government bills will be put forward to Parliament and allocates time for them.

Departments put forward their requests to the committee for permission to introduce their bill and to gain a slot in the legislative programme. Simon James in "British Cabinet Government" describes the role of the committee as "vet(ting) all bills before introduction."

A Cabinet Office "Guide to Making Legislation" describes the process. Departments are invited, about one year ahead, to put forward their bids for legislation in the following session. As the new session approaches the committee reviews the state of readiness of each proposed bill. The Guide warns that "If bills are not likely to be ready on time, they may be dropped". A meeting of the Committee will consider the Bill's introduction - requiring the relevant minister to circulate in advance a Bill Memorandum - and attend the committee to summarise the bill and answer questions about the content and readiness for introduction.

House of Commons Reform

The Report of the House of Commons Reform Committee - "Rebuilding the House" - has been published. Set up earlier this year to address growing concerns about the effectiveness of the House of Commons, it was chaired by Tony Wright - the highly respected Chair of the Public Administration Committee (which has done so much to highlight constitutional issues & press for more powerful oversight of the Executive).

The main recommendations include
- Election of Select Committee Chairs by the House in a secret ballot
- Election of members of Select Committees by each party in secret ballots, the allocation of seats to each party representing the proportion of seats held in the Commons by the parties.
- smaller Select Committees to improve effectiveness
- rapid selection of select committee membership after a General Election
- establishment of a House Business Committee - with a Backbench Business Committee to organise the use of non-ministerial business time
- revival of work towards establishing an e-petitions system
- establishment of a system for "agenda initiative" by the public
- establishment of a monthly slot for debate of backbench motions

"opening up the process of legislation and giving the public a real opportunity to influence the content of draft laws should be a priority in the New Parliament"

Peter Riddell (Times Assistant Editor & Chair of the Hansard Society) commented on the report in the Times.

The full report is available here.

The Coming General Election

There will be a General Election in the UK during 2010. That is predictable - the date can be guessed at (most people think that May 6th is the most likely, being local election day) - but otherwise this could be the most unpredictable election for some time. A number of factors are at play -

New boundaries will take effect. There are few constituencies that will see no change. Electoral data from previous elections is only available at constituency level. Therefore it is difficult to compare directly the old and new seats. Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have produced projections of change which are heavily relied upon. (C. Rallings & M. Thrasher, The Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies, (Plymouth: LGC Elections Centre, 2007)) A very sophisticated model is used, but exact data on a ward by ward basis is not published.

In British elections the concept of "swing" has featured heavily in analysis. (A wikipedia article explains the concept in more detail here). Essentially the formula is

Swing = ((A2 - A1) + (B1 - B2)/2)

where A2 is the percentage vote for Party A in election 2 (most recent election), A1 is the percentage vote for Party A in election 1,and similarly for Party B.

This works well when there are only two parties contesting a seat - but the vote has become more fractured over time. The next election is likely to see even more independents standing.

Many predictions for individual constituencies are based on a uniform swing across the country - which of course never happens.

There has been a crisis of confidence in the main political parties partly as a result of the expenses scandal, but which has deeper and older roots. This will make predictions very difficult for individual constituencies.

There are a number of computer websites that allow you to "predict" the results such as

Electoral Calculus

Telegraph

UK Elect

As the General Election nears, this blog will (as it did with the 2008 Congressional Elections in the USA) give you the background to the key seats.