Psephologists and political scientists

AUSTRALIA

Antony Green: blog site at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) of the Australian public broadcaster’s resident psephologist and elections commentator. Active for over 20 years, his blogsite is a massive archive of all things Australian – national and state. It also has extensive material on elections in other nations, as well as a great deal of material on electoral systems and mechanics. His political commentary is non-partisan journalism.

Psephos: online database created by researcher Dr Adam Carr; an extraordinarily extensive and very up-to-date database of election background material and election results covering most world nations.

Poll Bludger: blog site of polling and political commentator William Bowe, hosted within the Australian political journal Crikey; deals with polling data and related political issues in Australian politics.

The World Is Not Enough: blog site of Crikey writer Charles Richardson – a very comprehensive news service about the political behind elections worldwide (paywalled)

Pseph: blog site of Tasmanian political science academic and political commentator Dr Kevin Bonham, focussed on “psephology, poll watching and stray political commentary”.

Mumble, blogsite of Dr Peter Brent, was for many years one of the most extensive, regular and insightful blogs commenting on Australian politics. In 2015 Dr Brent took it commercial and it was for some months published behind the paywall at The Australian newspaper. In late 2015 that relationship come to an end, and Dr Brent is (as at late 2016) developing a new Mumble site.

Tally Room: blog site by commentator Ben Raue, covering election system issues in Australia and some other English-speaking nations.

Pollytics: blog site of commentator Scott Steel (pseudonym Possum Comitatus), hosted within the Australian political and media online journal Crikey. The site is apparently inactive since July 2013 but is still online. The blog dealt with elections, polling data and related political issues in Australian politics. Possum does, however tweet regularly at @pollytics.

Mark the Ballot: blog site of commentator ‘Mark’, focussed on exploring “advanced statistical techniques for interpreting political opinion polls.”

AustralianPolitics: blog and website of commentator and political scientist Malcolm Farnsworth, dealing with elections and election results and a variety of other issues in political science.

David Barry – see especially the tabs on ‘Maps’ and ‘Pseph’ – a basic blog site but clearly created by an expert on mapmaking, this site hosts some recent mapping information about Australian federal electoral divisions, as well as a data resource for past Australian election results.

Truth Seeker: blog site of anonymous commentator ‘Truth Seeker’, “…a politically non-aligned financial modeller and statistician”, focussed on “applying statistical and financial analysis techniques to analyse and forecast election outcomes across Australia.” The site seems to have gone inactive as of the Western Australian Senate special election results of April 2014.

UNITED STATES

Fruits and Votes, the long-established blogsite of Californian academic and orchardist Matthew Shugart, prolific author of political science and psephological wisdom.

ElectionLawBlog: blogsite of prominent US electoral specialist Professor Richard Hasen.

FiveThirtyEight: America’s most prominent elections prediction site, established by Nate Silver in 2008. Also features some political news as well as predictions relating to sporting events.

Dr Michael McDonald, specialist on electoral registration and turnout data, has a blog at his US Elections Project site, and is also an occasional contributor to the Huffington Post.

David Leip’s US Election Atlas, a major online repository of data on US election results for President, Senators and state Governorships. Leip, an electrical design engineer from Massachusetts, produces election result data drawn from original sources in rapid time following each US election election.

The Green Papers, an unadorned, nonpartisan blogsite “dedicated to the dissemination of facts, figures, tidbits and commentary- in fact, information of many different kinds- related (primarily) to the American political process”, established in 1999. Now 17 years old and covering its 5th presidential election cycle, the site is a very useful source of detailed data and process rules, especially in regard to the US presidential primary and election process.

Ari Berman, resident writer at The Nation magazine on political and electoral matters. This link is to his own home page.

Ballotlines: blog site of US commentator ‘Patrick’, “political blog that highlights how the logistics of our democracy shape its electoral outcomes by providing analysis and news regarding how officials are elected in the US. Special attention is paid to obstacles to voting, ways our democracy could be more representative of the population, and general political interests.”

DailyKos: a political news and opinion site, also operating as a progressive campaign interface (especially since 2016).

Douglas Amy’s PR Library – resources on proportional representation electoral systems, favouring STV, by Professor Amy of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, one of the main published authors in US psephology of recent decades.

Electoral Dysfunction, a Tumbler blog, has a modest collection of comments on US and British voting systems. Posts are not regular, but search for “Chart Showing Increased Political Polarisation” – an excellent and illuminating graphic!

[Inactive] Alizarin Indigo, a blog hosted at Daily Kos, commenting on elections in America, Britain, Australia and other places. No posts since April 2015.

CANADA

ThreeHundredEight.com, the blog site of Eric Grenier, one of Canada’s leading media commentators on elections and electoral science. The site focuses on polling, election predictions and some political commentary at both national and provincial level.

Parliamentum, blogsite of Ottawa writer James Bowden, covering Canadian and Commonwealth political history and institutions; particularly focussed on responsible government in Westminster parliaments and the constitutional  conventions relating to the formation of governments.

On Procedure and Politics, blogsite of an anonymous Canadian author “radical centrist”, apparently choosing anonymity due to a career in a public service position. He or she comments extensively on Canadian and British parliamentary procedure and politics, including some electoral matters.

Professor Dennis Pilon, of York University, Ontario, has an impressive track record of writings on electoral systems, and has been an expert adviser to various government electoral reform attempts. This is his university biographical homepage only, but contains detailed bibliographies of his work.

EUROPE

Josep Colomer: blog site of Catalan political scientist Professor Josep Colomer, dealing with a range of political science interests linked to his teaching activities.

General/International

ElectionResources – an impressive multi-national blog by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, in both English and Spanish, with links to web pages around the world; provides various detailed national and local election results statistics.