A post I wrote for The Conversation, largely in response to Daniel Hannan MEP’s post last week in The Telegraph about the end of the Liberal Democrats.
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The rose garden is long gone, but it’s not all doom and gloom for the Liberal Democrats
A blog I wrote for the LSE regarding recent opinion polls trends and coalition infighting.
Politics PGR Conference
The Politics PGR Conference took place last Friday, and was a success. Here is a link to some tweets from the conference. Some time this week, I’ll write a summary report to go up on the website, so people have a lasting document of it.
2015 General Election – 365 days to go
That’s right. A year today, the whole of the UK goes to the polls. Or at least, between probably 60% and 75% will go to the polls at any rate to decide who their next MP will be, which will in turn decide the next government. Continue reading 2015 General Election – 365 days to go
Politics PGR Conference
I’ll write more about this in a couple of weeks, once it’s all gone smoothly (hopefully), but next Friday is the annual Politics PGR Conference. The conference brings together some of the PhD students in our department, to present either a chapter from their thesis or a general research paper.
As well as presenting, I have the pleasure of organising this year’s conference, along with Russell Foster. For more information about the conference, click here. It should be a great day, and it’s open to everybody to attend, so please come along.
Book Review
Political Studies Review have published my review of David Denver et al.’s book ‘Elections and Voters in Britain’ (3rd edition) (2012). Read it here.
Think you can predict the next general election? What about Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine?
A little while ago I wrote a blog about opinion polls and what to do with them. It highlighted how interpretation of opinion polling is often more focused on grabbing a headline than trying to actually make use of the data it has provided. It seems to be one of those blogs that I can keep on sharing, because the headlines just keep on coming.
Of course, one popular polling question is to ask the respondent who they will vote for at the next general election. From all the collected responses, people can have a stab at who might form the next government. Opinion polls are important and this regard, and the likes of Electoral Calculus, UK Polling Report and Polling Observatory all do a great job in making predicting the next government a little bit more informed, and quite frankly, a little bit more fun… Continue reading Think you can predict the next general election? What about Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine?
My first published article
A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece entitled ‘Publishing academic work‘, which noted the advice and comments by staff members in Politics at Newcastle that edited academic journals. I mentioned in that piece that I had submitted a piece of work for peer review. The said piece was accepted for publication in the Politics journal, and is now available online. The link to the article and links to blogs/websites that have highlighted it are below.
Article; New Statesman; Political Studies Association blog; Democratic Audit; London School of Economics Politics & Policy blog; Liberal Democrat Voice; Mark Pack
Supervisions, and the ‘fear’
I have a full meeting about my thesis with my supervisors roughly once a month. We chat and discuss my research more often than that, but every month is our ‘structured interaction’, as it is known. In this blogpost, I want to discuss how my supervisory meetings have evolved since I started my PhD in September 2013, and the changing ‘fear’ as the ‘supervisee’. Continue reading Supervisions, and the ‘fear’
Choosing paper titles – advice from Patrick Dunleavy
Following from my blog post yesterday on the seminar on publishing academic work, here is some useful advice from Patrick Dunleavy on choosing titles for your work.