Or should have one at least. Via Matthew Shugart, she has apparently “been blogging”:http://pippanorris.typepad.com/pippa_norris_weblog/ since 2008 (admittedly with varying levels of activity). See, “for example,”:http://pippanorris.typepad.com/pippa_norris_weblog/2010/05/the-potential-electoral-penalty-of-the-liberal-conservative-coalition-government.html her interesting argument about voting preferences and the Liberal-Labour pact.
bq. Those reading the tea-leaves often claimed that the British public ‘wanted’ a hung parliament but, in fact, this cannot be deduced from the outcome. Each citizen cast a particular vote in their specific constituency, but the final outcome was the collective result of millions of independent decisions. One way we can throw light on this question is to turn to the 2010 British Election Study (BES) which has just been released. … in particular the results tell us something important about the second choice of Liberal Democrat voters. If the decision about entering a coalition with either Labour or the Conservatives were in the hands of Liberal Democrat voters, what would they have wanted? … Among those in this group who cast a ballot for the Liberal Democrats, only 12% opted for the Conservative party as their second choice preference. By contrast, almost half the Liberal Democrat voters (48%) chose Labour as their second preference. Likewise, the Liberal Democrats were the 2nd choice preference of four out of ten Labour voters. In other words, it is not simply that the Labour and the Liberal Democrats parties are far closer in their manifesto policies and ideological values, but Liberal Democrat and Labour voters also recognized the close affinity in their willingness to switch votes. The Conservative party was in a far different position, where UKIP (to the right of the party) were their largest 2nd choice party. Thus the new coalition governing British politics has clearly shaken up the old pattern of British party politics.