I have a new paper on the Gallagher index: the most common measure of electoral disproportionality. We often assume it runs from 0 (perfect 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺) to 1 (perfect 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺). But I show that in most party systems, 1 is not a possible value. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Something bugs me about Italian opinion polls. There's not enough variance: FdI has been at 27-and-a-bit in 12 of the last 13 polls. My suspicion was herding, so I went down a statistical rabbit hole, which involved inventing a new measure of herding (which may have picked up a different issue!). 🧵

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 11 October 2026 28% 🌹 Labour 23% ➡️ Reform 20% 🌳 Conservative 10% 🐥 Lib Dem 10% 🍃 Green 6% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

This is also true for GNU, which means "GNU's Not Unix"

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 4 October 2026 27% 🌹 Labour 23% ➡️ Reform 20% 🌳 Conservative 10% 🐥 Lib Dem 10% 🍃 Green 6% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

The politics are obviously difficult, but you can’t have a high wage economy if you have a soft cap on wages

Love getting out of the country and u̶p̶d̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶P̶o̶k̶é̶d̶e̶x̶ finding new birds on the Merlin app

I agree, but opting for SV would be to pick preference expression at the expense of proportionality. Also, Australia has AV and it’s politics is plenty adversarial.

Ah I see. Yeah, basically think you’d have to model EU referendum voting intention based on demographics etc. Should be possible with the new BES data sometime next year

Yeah, this is bread and butter stuff! That’s basically what a poll does, but you could get more sophisticated if you wanted

Very excited to share this news! Cant wait to get started

My general point is that well designed AMS = ✅, AMS as it exists in Scotland = ❌

Well yes, but if you have eg half and half it’s not that bad. Also, Scotland allocated the list seats by region, which also makes it less proportional. That’s a bad way of doing things too.

By adjusting the size of the list tier: the larger it is the closer you get to proportionality. You could also just give people one vote for both if you cared, but I don’t think it’s much of an issue if you design the system well

Thanks, Elliott! Hope you’re well!

I think it would but only in a loose way, since the left bloc has 3 parties but voters only get two preferences. So it’d consolidate the right bloc but not the left one!