Featured work
Some highlights from recent articles and reports. You can find more by clicking on the links at the top of the page.
Hello! It’s been a while. I’m not the most assiduous updater of this website – Oskar the cat here has been a sleepy role model – but it’s probably time I collated my recent work and put it on this site and wrote some new stuff. I’m interested in moving into some other areas of […]
Rather than fantasising about Grand Coalitions, let us consider things that can be accomplished by a minority government with the support, tacit or active, of the main opposition party. There would be, and should be, no suspension of party hostilities, or abandonment of party positions, but at the legislative level an agenda could be set that would command a majority in a fragmented parliament.
‘Too many moving parts.’ This was the understandable complaint of a political scientist (oh, all right, it was Philip Cowley) about the complexities of writing about the 2015 election. Back in the day, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh could get a good deal of the story by trotting from one side of Smith Square to […]
About Lewis
Lewis Baston is a writer on elections, politics, and history. He consults on electoral and political matters for private clients and has conducted training in elections and parliamentary processes for UK and international customers. He is a frequent commentator for various broadcast, published and online media.
This site gathers together in one place Lewis’s contributions to sites like Progress Online, Conservative Home and Comment is Free, along with the reports and books that Lewis has written. You can find original content on The Blog and and archive of reports, articles and books that Lewis has written.
Read MoreRecent Blog Posts
June 2, 2017 |
A projection of the 2017 election
I did a lot of work before the 2015 election trying to anticipate what might happen seat by seat in that election, looking at local factors, candidates, demographics, recent local election results, Lord Ashcroft‘s constituency opinion polling and all of that. Like most prediction efforts in 2015, it was not very successful. It was swamped by three things – (1) the broad national tide in England and Wales that submerged quite a lot of the local differences I anticipated. Part of the Conservative success was built on ‘nationalising’ the election choice, to the detriment of the Lib Dems in particular who were hoping for personal votes to salvage them as happened in elections when...
May 5, 2016 |
LOCAL ELECTIONS 2012 IN RETROSPECT
Local election results – England and Wales The 2012 local elections, leaving the London mayoralty aside, were a considerable success for Labour. While in 2011 Labour did very well in the big urban areas and not so well elsewhere, in 2012 Labour advanced pretty much everywhere that the party is a viable proposition, including such places as Weymouth, Tamworth and Great Yarmouth where the Conservative vote held up well in 2011, suggesting that the party is making progress on a much wider front than last year. In terms of benchmarks and targets for party performance, Labour exceeded all realistic expectations. The party made a net gain of 823 seats across Britain, comfortably over the...
August 25, 2015 |
Deputy dilemmas
the leadership contest is just an embarrassment, the deputy leadership contest is an embarrassment of riches.