The 2015 British Election Study

1. The 2015 British Election Study Professor Ed Fieldhouse Professor Jane Green Professor Hermann Schmitt Professor Geoffrey Evans Professor Cees van der Eijk Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

2. Three successful research funding applications • The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context • Data collection to enable understanding of the 2015 British election, continuing the series of British Election Studies since 1960. • The Scottish Independence Referendum and the British Voter: an enhancement to the British Election Study Internet Panel • Funded under the Future of UK and Scotland initiative • Significant enhancement to the BES online panel study; additional waves in January and September 2014; enlarged samples in all waves up to Summer 2016 (Scottish, Welsh and English), sample of 16-17 year olds. • 55,000 additional target interviews in total. • Enhancing the Impact of the British Election Study • Resources for a part-time Impact Fellow/researcher and senior media advisor providing support for dissemination and engagement. Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

3. BES 2015: Themes, Study Design, Priorities • Disengagement, Accountability and Representation • Informs the prioritisation of items e.g. trust, turnout, registration, policy responsibility and delivery; issue-scales for longer term comparability • Research partnerships and engagement, e.g. Electoral Commission, Hansard Society • Sampling design and stratification; minimal clustering, response rates for hard-to-reach groups; constituency and campaign characteristics, and socio-economic context, etc. • Linking of data, to candidate and campaign characteristics, etc. • Need to understand the Scottish Referendum, and other elections. • Understanding the vote choice and the voter in context • Spatial context; socio-economic, political and inter-personal context • Political and institutional context; sub-national and cross-national elections • Temporal context; the need for panel data and long-term comparability • The context of survey measurement; within-survey effects and mode effects Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

4. The BES instruments Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

5. Post-linking of data for users Turnout validation (F2F) Registration checking (BESIP) Constituency data Local Census data expert survey for party placements Integrating BES data within a network of complementary studies Pre-linking of data with studies receiving and/or likely to receive funding

6. International and comparative • Prioritising established questions • European Election Study module (BESIP wave 2) • Comparative Study of Electoral Systems: post election mail back or stand alone survey. • International advisory board – and liaison with other national election studies Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

7. BESIP innovative features • User experiments and proposals (‘playground’ items e.g. certainty scales) • Split sample for alternative questions (e.g. PTV and party feeling scales; European integration position) • Randomisation of question placement (e.g. party ID, vote choice, MII, trust) • Randomisation of question object within grid (e.g. party leaders & issues for evaluation of performance & responsibility) and of response categories (e.g. social desirability) • Psychological characteristics: social desirability, risk taking • Individualised (pre-loaded) questions: who is your local MP? • Discussant network module: focus on turnout and household relationships (norms, expressive motives, costs). • Political knowledge quiz with pictures • Mapping local community Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

9. Innovation: mapping project • Collaboration with Cara Wong, Jake Bowers and Daniel Rubenson • Respondent define their own communities (using Google mapping technology) • Respondent perceptions of neighbourhood: e.g. economic performance, norms of turnout, effect of cuts, legacy of Thatcherism, impact of immigration, social, political and ethnic diversity. • Equivalent questions about pre-defined geographies (e.g. constituency) • Potential for linking objective data • To be introduced in BESIP wave 3. Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

12. Four Examples of “Local Communities”

13. Innovation: social media • Gather tweets (from firehose) during the 2015 campaign by a predefined/responsive list of relevant hashtags and topics • Indicator of issue salience and emphasis in campaign • Potential for sentiment analysis of positive/negative tone • Gecoding of tweets for linking with constituency and candidate data • Gather all tweets and follower information on BES respondents who provide twitter handle. • Allows comparison of respondents and candidates Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014

14. Website • New professionally designed BES website • One stop shop for new BES data historical data • Data playground feature: create simple charts& tables • News, blogs, working papers etc. • To be launched in April Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014