Research into ballot papers cast in the May 2007 local government elections should be carried out according to a report published today by the Local Government and Communities Committee. The committee’s Elections 2007 Report makes a number of recommendations including a chief returning officer for Scotland and decoupling of local government and national elections.

An online collection of election data which provides detail down to constituency level for 60 nations worldwide. It currently covers the period 1944-2007 providing information on legislative elections for upper and lower chambers as well as some sub-national elections. Compilation is by Dawn M. Bracanti of Washington University in St Louis, using publicly available resources such as government dep...

For those of you who like election stats and maps, the the 2010 London Borough Council Elections report, authored by Gareth Piggott in the GLA Intelligence Unit, is now available. The full report is here: You can also find: A spreadsheet containing all the data from the report - A motion chart showing the relationship between share of votes and seats won by the major parties in elections since 196...

This site provides free access to the full text of a book edited by Michael Marsh, Slava Mikhaylov and Hermann Schmitt which was published as CONNEX Report Series No 01 by University of Mannheim, Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) in 2007. ISSN 1864-1539. The 583 page book provides analysis of the 2004 European Parliament elections using data from the 2004 European Election Studie...

Last night's council by-election results: Pimhill Ward, Shrewsbury & Atcham BC. Con hold. Con 341 (45.6%, -25%), LD 331 (44.3%, +44.3%), BNP 59 (7.9%, +7.9%), Ind 16 (2.1%, +2.1%). Technically a 34.7% swing from Con to LD since 2007 but this is because the LDs did not run in 2007 but had run in earlier elections and come similarly close. Labour ran in 2007 but not in this contest or any of the...

Next Friday from 9am until 4pm, and Sunday evening from 6pm until midnight I will be hosting, along with Hopi Sen, a live elections programme on PlayRadioUK. These would be very much akin to how we covered the local elections on 18 Doughty Street on local election night in 2007. Very rough and ready and using citizen journalists all round the country to provide information and updates on what is g...

The Commission as recently made public its report on transparency in 2007. You can download the document - COM (2008) 630 final - here. The report is a valuable overview of all the activities of the Commission in the field...

More antitrust. The Commission has released its Annual report on competition policy for 2007. You can find it here. The Annual report is an immensely valuable resource and it goes through all the salient (and some not so exciting) developments...

Last Friday I failed to report a pretty big political story - and so did Newsnight. But then hardly any other media outlets reported it either, and David Cameron and his colleagues must have been pretty delighted. At Reading Crown Court six men were sentenced to a total of nearly 14 years in jail for election fraud in Slough in the May 2007 elections. As I reported for Newsnight they had exploited...

Transport - Headline final figures on the number of people killed and injured on the roads in Great Britain in 2007 were first published in June 2008. This report provides more detailed information about accident circumstances, vehicle involvement and the consequent casualties in 2007, along with some of the key trends in accidents and casualties. In addition it contains seven articles containing ...