Lawrence McKay

🚨New book alert!🚨

Thrilled to announce that my @britishacademy.bsky.social Monograph, 'Capital, Privilege, and Political Participation,' will be published via @livunipress.bsky.social later this month.

Find details and pre-order (with discount) here: liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

The Times claims that private school numbers going down 1.9% is "higher than expected"

The Independent Schools Council, Mail, Times made exaggerated claims of 25-40%

The IFS modelled a fall of 3-7%

Where was the prediction the Tjmes refers to?

www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

Haru Nemuri, The Armed, Hayley Williams (currently only available as 17 seperate singles on streaming - god knows why)

New article out now in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social in which I provide a comparative analysis of disability & political parties and develop a framework for assessing their accessibility.

David Marquand’s Intellectual and Political Legacy David Marquand, who died in April 2024, was a prominent figure in late 20th century British politics. This collection is devoted to analysing, criticising and celebrating his political and academic co...

David Marquand’s Intellectual & Political Legacy

SI edited by @pjsloman.bsky.social Colin Crouch & Ben Jackson with @emilyrobinson.bsky.social Will Hutton @npjgarland.bsky.social @anthonybarnett.bsky.social
Hilary Wainwright Andrew Gamble Jean Seaton & +

politicalquarterly.org.uk/collections/...

• Donald Trump delivered a rambling speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he made several improbable claims and appeared to forget names. • Trump falsely asserted that his late uncle, Dr. John Trump, taught Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, at MIT, despite Kaczynski never attending the institution. • He also claimed to have discussed Kaczynski with his uncle, which is highly unlikely as his uncle died in 1985, years before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber. • During the event, Trump forgot the names of aides and made an unsubstantiated claim about securing $16 trillion in US investment. • The speech raised concerns about Trump's age and capacity, as he is the oldest person to ever be sworn in as president.

you genuinely have to admire his brain. getting hammered 24/7 on Epstein? better fabricate a personal link to the Unabomber, specifically mentioning one of the prestigious universities where Epstein peddled his influence

We invite paper submissions to our workshop on Earth Observation Data in the Social Sciences @gesis.org
⏳November 26-28, 2025
🎓Keynotes Prof. Dr. Monika Kuffer (University of Twente)
Dr. Ana Andries (University of Surrey).
⏱️Deadline August 6th
✉️abstracts (max. 500 words) to dennis.abel@gesis.org

BJPolS abstract discussing the role of symbolic right-wing politics in cultural consumption, specifically referencing wine and classical music in pubs, based on a survey from Switzerland with 1,550 respondents.

NEW -

The Electoral Appeal of Symbolic Class Signalling Through Cultural Consumption - cup.org/44rcdVW

- @dweisstanner.bsky.social & @saengler.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Why are working class people under-represented in legislatures?

We propose one potential mechanism: working-class individuals are *perceived* as less likely to achieve political success, and are subsequently 'pragmatically' discriminated against.

We provide an experiment in the UK to test it:

A sign of how little attention it's got, but it just passed a planning bill that's going to make housebuilding and infrastructure a lot easier that I recall being told for many years Labour would never pass, because it would be torn apart over it by protests and by nimby backbenchers in the Commons

Oh, interesting! Because gender in itself is not a divide among older voters in recent years.

Builds on the analysis I shared yesterday - which people seemed to enjoy!

bsky.app/profile/lawr...

Featuring new analysis of the local elections - I find that areas in ill health are switching to Reform, and argue that the PIP U-turn must be the start of a wider reckoning with health inequalities:

Basically correlation is the tightness of the fit between two variables. In this case proportions with a particular characteristic in an area, and the vote share for different parties. It doesn't tell you the proportion in a given group voting for X party - you'd need surveys for that

Where are Labour’s next electoral battlegrounds? - British Politics and Policy at LSE Keir Starmer's recent "Plan for Change" speech signals Labour's nervousness about securing a second term. Labour's electoral challenge Labour is the mirror image of that of Boris Johnson after 2019, h...

Thanks! I did something a bit similar here - the ONS has its own small-area classification based on the census, I looked at the characteristics of marginal seats using that.

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

It is funny to look at those Lab/Reform overlaps - this is kind of the coalition McSweeney et al want and yet they got an absolute pasting. I guess because it comes more from losses with the socially liberal demographics than gains with the more auth demographics.

It wasn't, but it would be possible to go through the internet archive screen grabs like I did way back then! A few limitations but it gives a good general idea.

Comparing registration systems using the International Difficulty of Registration Index (IDORI). How difficult is electoral registration in the UK? Abstract. Electoral registration in the UK is often critiqued for making it hard for voters to participate in elections. However, without a tool for a syst

Mine and @profsob.bsky.social paper
Comparing registration systems using the International Difficulty of Registration Index (IDORI). How difficult is electoral registration in the UK?
has been published. Please read it here,
url: academic.oup.com/pa/article/d...

Some of the big Reform predictors I find really interesting, especially ill health (something that for over 40 years has been strongly linked to Labour voting). Will be writing about this soon for @johnsmithcentre.com

To give a little taster - here's the top 10 for Reform:

Local elections 2025: aggregate-level correlations | Created with Datawrapper Pearson correlation coefficients between aggregate-level census data and the 2025 local election vote share of each party, for the electoral ward or County Electoral District.

Who wants to see how 81 different census variables correlate with this May's local election results? Of course you do:

www.datawrapper.de/_/avuui/?v=4

For a data collection we want to launch soon, we're looking for a German speaker who could translate our survey instrument to German. This should only take a few hours of work. Of course we are remunerating! Interested? Please reach out to @alexjabbour.bsky.social !

excellent cover, big fan

Susan Hall, the 2024 Tory candidate for London mayor, has joined Rupert Lowe's movement, which promises:
• Deport 2m people
• Push for foreign nationals who speak poor English or "fail to integrate" to "go home"
• "Restore Christian principles
• "Carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery"
• Death penalty

Short-term rentals can disrupt urban life & influence the ballot box - @tonirodon.bsky.social, Raya & Llaneza link high Airbnb density in Barcelona to increased support for parties targeting home-sharing regulation: buff.ly/cpnXuCV

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban

Now that #EPSA2025 has begun, I invite you to attend the panel "Understanding the Rural-Urban Cleavage", which I will be pleased to chair next Saturday at 3 p.m. @lawrencemckay.bsky.social and @astroppe.bsky.social will present really interesting papers!

*Register data* results now published for whole Germany:

37% of women under 25 voted for die Linke in the German federal elections in 2025.

Also very striking to see that the AfD was the strongest party among *all age groups of men except those older than 60*.

🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community.

🔗 epssnet.org

Here’s a thread with everything you need to know.

🧵

Wow - that is worrying (but v useful info for the EPOP-adjacent community)