Wednesday 31 August 2011

Singapore presidential elections

Tony Tan narrowly won the singapore elections a few days ago
see the official announcement of the count on the official elections website
The Straits Times also has news coverage of the count, plus interviews and analysis. It alos has discussion of the use of facebook by candidatesfor discussion of the state of democracy in the region try these useful websites
Amnesty International
see how it rates on Transparency International's global corruption barometer
IFES has recent news which focuses specifically on elections
for election monitoring reports see
Maruah who worked on behalf of ASEAN. and monitored mainstream media coverage of the campaigns.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Where can I find election data? part 2 the UK

Electoral Commission
Independent body established by the UK Parliament. Website provides access to local, national, devolved assembly and European Parliament elections since 2005. Also available is data on political spending and analysis of the election campaigns.

House of Commons Library Research Papers
Produced by staff of the House of Commons Library to brief MPs, these regularly cover by-elections, general elections and devolved assembly elections, offering facts and figures on seats, votes cast and party representation.

Elections Centre at the University of Plymouth
Collates and analyses electoral data with a particular emphasis on local elections. Some results online. Also Produces the Local Elections Handbook, published annually since the 1980s, which is a comprehensive source of voting and electoral statistics for every local authority in Great Britain.

Several good printed series held by major research libraries and traceable via COPAC are
Times Guide to the House of Commons
Long established series, written by Times political journalists. Copies cover most general elections since 1885, offering election results, analysis, manifestos since 1950 and biographies of candidates.
Britain Votes
Series of volumes containing full election results; plus scholarly essays analysing key themes. Volume 1 edited by FWS Craig and published by Parliamentary Research Services in 1977 covered the general elections of 1974; subsequent volumes (compiled by different editors) covered the succeeding elections

British Election Study
Long established study of the attitudes and behaviour of the electorate. Covers general elections from 1963 onwards. Information, research papers and some quantitative data can be downloaded from the website. Earlier sets can be obtained via the ESDS data service

Elections - where can I find data online?

Elections have been very quiet over the summer. So here instread are a selection of my favourite recommended resources for finding election data on the net.

International resources.
ACE Electoral Knowledge Network
Free access to a wealth of election information about 100s of nations worldwide. Maintained by a collaboration of authoritative institutions including International IDEA, IFES. It contains an encyclopedia, election calendars and extensive country level information. The latter includes information on electoral systems, results, analyses and examples of electoral materials produced by the nation.

Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA)
Project led by Professor Ken Kollman of the University of Michigan. It aims to create a public repository of election results by constituency for parliamentary (lower house legislative) elections worldwide. Data includes results, votes cast, votes received by individual candidates and parties.

Election Guide

Compiled by IFES (the International Foundation for Election Systems). A key starting point for research. Free access to authoritative national and presidential election data since 1998. Also offered is expert analysis, links to national electoral commission websites, and a calendar of forthcoming events.

Lijphart Elections Archive
Research collection of district level election results for national legislative elections in 26 countries which is based at the University of California, San Diego. Covers the period before 2004. The website can be useful for tracing printed sources containing election results.

Psephos Adam Carr's Election Archive
Extensive online archive of recent and historical election results maintained by Dr Adam Carr. It contains entries for over 160 nations worldwide, offering election results and statistics for national and local elections. Dates differ according to individual nation, but in some cases (such as Britain and Australia) extend beyond 1900.