Simon Hix

Simon Hix

@simonhix.bsky.social

Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics, EUI. President-Elect, @epssnet.bsky.social. FBA, FRSA. Democracy, parties, elections, electoral systems etc. Live music. COYI

11,774 Followers 3,707 Following 665 Posts Joined Nov 2023
4 days ago

Yeah, yeah. @tomtheuns.bsky.social already made that point 😓

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4 days ago

Touché 🤣

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4 days ago

Not really

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4 days ago

And similar dynamics in Austria for many years, where FPÖ became the only opposition to the grand coalition

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4 days ago

I missed that. Thought they weren’t going to make it. Thanks.

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4 days ago

There will now be only 3 parties in the Baden-Wutemberg Landtag: Greens, CDU, and AfD. With Greens and CDU likely to continue in government, AfD will become the only opposition. That could have dramatic implications for future elections in the state.

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6 days ago
Preview
Italy claim historic first victory over England as Borthwick’s men are rattled in Rome At the 33rd time of asking Italy finally beat England, claiming a 23-18 Six Nations victory in Rome

Bravo Azzurri! Well deserved.

Instead of "England in crisis", the emphasis should be on how Italian rugby has crossed a major threshold. And the contrast with the poor state of Italian football is also culturally fascinating.
www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/m...

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1 week ago
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Gorton and Denton: the bloc vote sums

• Green + Lab + LD 2024 → 2026

• Cons + Brexit/Reform 2019 → 2026

make one wonder if there's less than what meets the debate's eye on the finer points of party ideology or candidate quality.

Different elections, turnover in the active electorate, and yet.

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1 week ago

This will be the 3rd edition. If you study pol. behaviour and work on #CEE, this is the right place to present your research. Dates: June 25-26. Discussants include @simonhix.bsky.social & @eliasdinas.bsky.social. Highlight: roundtable on dem. erosion with H. Kriesi, M. Svolik & N. Wunsch.

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1 week ago
A picture of PEW poll on global attitude survey, saying the % who rate the morality and ethics of people in their country as good vs bad, where the US has the worst rankings and Canada the best

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best

Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!

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1 week ago

I meant "Davos", of course!

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1 week ago

I agree. And Canada's limp response too, which seemed odd after the Davis speech. It's not like the US didn't flag this with the armed forces build up in the region in the last few weeks. Can't really understand how the E3+Canada were caught napping.

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1 week ago

Sanchez 💪

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1 week ago
Preview
Trump belittles Starmer with 'no Churchill' jibe but can the special relationship recover? The remarks came amid a row over the refusal to permit the use of UK bases for the initial US-Israel strikes.

“And you, sir, are certainly no FDR” … although Starmer is too weak to say anything like that
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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1 week ago

Absolutely. And, of course, the SD strategy in DK might make sense from a “bloc politics” perspective, if it means expanding the overall votes of the Red block. But, that logic doesn’t work in the UK FPTP system.

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1 week ago
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That "Danish Model" he went for is paying off in Denmark too, latest polls:
SD : 22.1% (-5.4)
SF : 13.2% (+4.9)

Exactly three weeks from an election

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1 week ago
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Our latest voting intention (1-2 March 2026) has the Greens on their highest figure ever recorded by YouGov, significantly ahead of Labour, who are on their lowest figure to date

Reform UK: 23% (-1 from 22-23 Feb)
Greens: 21% (+4)
Conservatives: 16% (-2)
Labour: 16% (-2)
Lib Dems: 14% (=)

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1 week ago

Congratulations Ingvild. So great to see this paper in print. It deserves to be widely read and widely cited. 👏

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1 week ago
Preview
The Green Gender Gap: Environmental attitudes and pro-environmental vote choice across Europe Does gender matter for how we engage with green political ideas? Using more than twenty years of data across 36 European countries, this paper identif…

Still controlling for gender without thinking about why? You can cite me💚👩‍🔬💚

I show that the gender gap in progressive climate and environmental views is a persistent empirical regularity that cannot be explained by differences in socioeconomic background, political ideology, or risk aversion.

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1 week ago

How’s that move rightwards on immigration working out for you Sir Keir?

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1 week ago

For now this is just one poll. But if this trend continues the current FPTP voting system makes no sense anymore.

If you add the SNP and Plaid Cymru to the mix we might end up with a completely random result at the next elections. Which will undermine trust in the U.K. democracy even further.

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1 week ago
Political cartoon about the Expatriation Act of 1907, which revoked the citizenship of women who married non-citizens.

#ResistanceRoots
#WomensHistoryMonth

Today in history, 1907: Congress passes the Expatriation Act, which stripped American-born women of their citizenship if they married a non-citizen. A woman had to adopt her husband’s nationality, effectively making her a stateless alien in her own country. /1

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1 week ago

Maybe, but that's not the claim most people are making today. Their argument is that these voters have switched in the last few years from Labour to Reform. There is little evidence of that.

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1 week ago

This is also supported by individual level data, which shows Labour losing more voters to the Greens than to Reform. The rise of Reform in traditional Labour areas does not mean that Labour voters in those places are all shifting to Reform. That’s an ecological fallacy (cf. @tabouchadi.bsky.social)

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1 week ago

Well, no, they’re not just as wrong. The bigger error is not seeing that “trying to win over voters from a party on the opposite end of the spectrum, whose values your core voters oppose” is not same as “chasing voters from party on same side ideologically whose values your core voters like.”

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2 weeks ago

Also Starmer (and Badenoch, but no surprise there) adopting Goodwin's "sectarianism" framing.. ugly stuff.

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2 weeks ago

This is from Keir Starmer’s letter to Labour MPs today. This sort of stuff is shockingly partisan and nasty. It will only backfire with voters who switched to Green or are thinking of switching.

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2 weeks ago

Looks like us ‘bloc politics’ people were on to something after all ;)

benansell.substack.com/p/british-po...

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2 weeks ago

With Labour as SDLP, and the party to the left of UK Lab and SDLP has the same political colour 😉

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2 weeks ago
Oxford Abstracts Delegate Registration

📢 Registration Reminder for EPSS Belfast 2026

If you haven't registered already, please note that the registration deadline for the EPSS Belfast Conference is Friday, 13 March 👇🏼

Register here: app.oxfordabstracts.com/register/eve...

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