La République en Marche (LREM), Emmanuel Macron’s newly formed political party has taken a decisive lead in the first round of the legislative elections with 32% of the votes on Sunday June 11. Les Républicains (LR, right) come second with 21%, followed by the Front National at 13% (FN, radical right), La France Insoumise at 11% (LFI, radical left), and Parti Socialiste (PS) with a bit less than 10% of the votes (including its traditional allies). In a two-round single member district electoral system, the lead of LREM (despite being around 11%) could lead to a hegemonic domination in...

The decision by Theresa May to call a snap election has gone against her. Despite remaining the largest party in Westminster, the Conservatives have fallen short of an absolute majority of seats, and a hung Parliament is the outcome of this election. Jeremy Corbyn has brought the Labour Party to 40% of the votes, the largest result since 2001. In a context characterised by the highest turnout since 1997 (69%), a massive shift back towards a two-party system has occurred: the UKIP has collapsed, the SNP has stepped back, and the Liberal Democrats have not bounced back after the...

In our assessment of the current state of the British public debate based on the original data collected by the CISE as part of the comparative ICCP project, we have seen that among British voters have a great deal of interest in shared goals, although divisive economic policies are quite relevant as well, with the traditional left-wing positions having the upper hand. Here we look at political parties. Basically, what we have already seen in both France and the Netherlands is that two different party strategies emerge. On the one hand, they can present a consensual face, omitting conflicts and campaigning on their credibility...

On the next 8th June, UK voters will be faced with a decisive election, which could have a profound impact not only on British internal affairs but also on the Brexit negotiations with the European Union. Beyond the analysis of the UK public opinion and political parties, derived from the original survey conducted by the CISE, a matter that requires further investigation and has been gaining increasing attention by pundits and the media is surely the forecasting of the composition of the next House of Commons.  In the past few days, more and more experts have been underlying that the...

Building on the tools provided by issue yield theory (De Sio and Weber 2014), this analysis looks at the data collected by CISE through a CAWI survey launched a few weeks before the British general election. Similarly to what we have recently done before the Dutch parliamentary election last March and the French Presidential election last April, we rely on an innovative measurement of positional issues, which provides a common issue yield index for this type of issues. Positional issues are in general, defined by reference to two rival goals (e.g. progressive vs. traditional morality): the issue yield measure assesses the...