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UK Election Tidbits

- May 8, 2010

Stochastic Democracy compares the various forecasts and the outcome here. One the most important question — the allocation of seats — the most accurate predictions came from political scientists — a team at PoliticsHome and Simon Hix and Nick Vivyan (see Henry’s earlier post). Some of you may have read the dust-up between the PoliticsHome team and Nate Silver of 538 about their respective forecasting models (see this post of Silver’s). Stochastic Democracy’s tabulation suggests that PoliticsHome got the best of the “NerdFight.”

At Psychology Today, Michael Alvarez discusses the possibility of tactical or strategic voting in this election (via Gary King). He describes the ongoing debate about whether voters have the sophistication and information to engage in strategic voting. Perhaps this election made that information a little more accessible:

bq. In today’s UK elections, there is an interesting twist — an application of new technologies that provides information that will help voters to vote “tactically.” The Guardian has published an online “tactical voting guide“, that actually lets voters look up data from their area to determine how they might best vote tactically. If many voters use an online tool like this, we might see the rate of “tactical” voting in today’s election soar well above what has been estimated in past elections.