Rosie White, Karen Ross and James Leggott Northumbria University This year’s MeCCSA Annual Conference was hosted by Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, 7th-9th January 2015. We started preparing for the event over a year in advance and one of our key concerns was that bad weather (snow, ice, hail, wind or other act of …Continue Reading

Stephen Coleman University of Leeds Forget the televised election debates. The debate about the debates is much more revealing. The pitiful ‘will they-won’t they’ saga that’s been played out in the past few months offers a telling insight into the assumptions of elite political communication and the grounds upon which so many people choose to …Continue Reading

Morgane Kimmich London South Bank University With Cameron refusing to participate without the Green party, Miliband and Clegg calling the Conservatives’ bluff, and minor parties now demanding to be invited, it is more than ever uncertain whether televised leader debates will be part of the 2015 election. So what exactly would we miss out on …Continue Reading

Ivor Gaber University of Sussex  A few weeks ago David Butler, the doyen of academic pollsters who has been following and writing about elections since 1945, said: “I have been watching elections for the past 70 years and this is, undoubtedly, the least predictable and most interesting one I have ever been involved with.” I …Continue Reading

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen City University, London  Election campaign coverage is an odd genre, made up of game show, satire and soap opera in equal measures. It tends to be about one of three topics: the election horse race; slinging mud and poking fun at the leaders, their gaffes and the weaknesses they imply; and the campaign …Continue Reading

Dominic Wring Loughborough University  A journalistic cliché we’re likely to hear a great deal more- and it has already been said- is that this General Election is the most important in a generation. But it is often difficult to gauge the significance of a particular election until sometime after the event. What is not in …Continue Reading