LINKS:
The best websites around.
The first versions of this site were drafted on an Amiga 1200 which only has 2 MB of RAM and is now about ten years old (though still working!). Because of this, you will find no detailed results here (constituency-by-constituency, etc.). I have indicated where various quite rare electoral data can be found for free on the Web in this page.
The pages given on this site have been given reviews which are entirely my own opinions. What follows is a selection of my personal favourite sites on the subject of elections. If you know of a site on this subject which is fairly good (even mediocre will do) and which I haven't put here, tell me and I will look into it.
http://www.aceproject.org; The Administration and Cost of Elections (ACE) Project's site. No election results, but interesting (though slightly out-of-date) discussions of everything you can think of and more to do with elections.
http://www.alba.org.uk; Iain Old's
website on Scottish politics and elections, etc. (Not for Blairites.)
Election results contained: Westminster results for 1997 in Scotland by
constituency, Scottish Parliament election results for 1999 by constituency
(regional results are also broken down by constituency on his site). [This site has not been updated recently.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk; BBC News Online. Invaluable for keeping up with the dizzying pace of news these days. Thorough, interesting and extremely well done. A brilliant archive of the 2001 election at /vote2001. (I am starting to run out of superlatives for this site, so I shall stop.)
http://www.club.demon.co.uk/Politics/elect.html;
Ivor Peksa's site on British politics and election results.
Contains full constituency results for the 1999 European
elections, which do not seem to be available elsewhere.
Election results contained: All Westminster results for 1997, European
Parliament election results for 1999 broken down by constituency across Great
Britain (not in Northern Ireland, where the count was conducted differently).
http://www.coventrysocialistparty.freeserve.co.uk/; the Coventry Socialist Party, who were kind enough to link to the Local Elections 2002 site. No to university tuition fees!
http://www.warwicklabour.org.uk; again, they link to me. Site of the Labour Society at Warwick University, currently run by Michael Britland.
If you're going to link to Warwick Labour, then you have to link to Warwick Conservatives, but they haven't got a website at the moment. Watch out for current Society president Simon Baker - surely he will end up in the Commons one day.
http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk; the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends at Oxford University (though when I look into this place in Whitaker's Almanack the address given is at City University in London - explanations welcome). This site carries downloadable details of recent election results, including the only set I know of of Welsh Assembly list election results broken down by constituency at /election/wparl_results.htm.
http://electionresources.org; Election Resources on the Internet. An exhaustive list of links to electoral websites across the world.
http://www.klipsan.com/elecnews.htm; Klipsan Press' election news. An interesting site from America on the latest news on elections and electoral matters from all over the globe. Previous versions of the page available elsewhere on the site.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk; the website of the Electoral Reform Society. Various articles on the functioning of electoral systems in the UK and abroad, a description of the main electoral systems (including the Society's favoured one, the Single Transferable Vote or STV), and an interesting (if infrequently updated) monthly news section. Also carries the latest edition of Voting Matters, a (very) occasional publication devoted to the finer points of STV counting (it is the link marked Technical Papers).
http://www.cix.co.uk/~rosenstiel/stvrules/index.htm; the ERS' official rules for conducting STV elections; difficult to understand for non-specialists. Devised in 1972 by Robert Newland and Frank Britton, revised by them in 1976 and further revised in 1997 by Colin Rosenstiel and James Woodward-Nutt.
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1998/98128703.htm; the British Government's official rules for conducting STV elections; impossible to understand for non-specialists. The counting rules are 44A-44M. [From the Stationery Office site]
http://www.bcs.org.uk/election/meek/meekm.htm; a full description of the Meek Algorithm for conducting STV elections by computer, for anyone who has read the technical papers on the ERS website and have been left wondering what it is. (Provided by the British Computer Society.) [The link is not currently working.]
http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/byelections/index.htm; Keith Edkins' site on English council by-elections. Nice enough to give me a link.
http://explorers.whyte.com; Nicholas Whyte's invaluable website on Northern Irish elections. A must. Do not go any further than here for matters relating to Northern Irish elections.
www.election.polarbears.com; unless you come here: Ciaran Quinn's site on Irish Elections. Includes very entertaining graphics of STV elections.
http://www.ukpol.co.uk; Julian White's website, sponsored by Politico's bookshop, which I finally tracked down on a rare recent visit to London approximately five minutes before it closed. I have terrible trouble navigating around this site - good luck. Do not trust any estimates of time they may give you for updates.
http://www.election.demon.co.uk;
David Boothroyd's website on British election results, with an
archive of General Election results back to 1983. Successor to
his old site at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London (which
has not been updated since about 1997 and appears to be now dead
- people with dodgy links please realise this). Should be the
first port of call for anyone interested in British elections
(after here, that is).
Election results contained: Westminster election results for 1983, 1987, 1992
and 1997; Welsh Assembly election results for 1999, Greater London Authority
election results for 2000, a commentary on the elections under the House of
Lords Act 1999, among much information on now defunct authorities such as the
Greater London Council and Northern Ireland House of Commons. A full list
of candidates for the 2001 General Election, results for this are slowly being
added.
VARIOUS GOVERNMENT SITES WHICH MAY BE HELPFUL (?)
http://www.london.gov.uk; the website of the Greater London authority. Contains links to full election results of the first GLA elections in 2000 (full constituency election results, Mayor of London first and second preferences by constituency, list votes by constituency) though these are actually carried by the DETR website.
http://www.wales.gov.uk; the website of the National Assembly for Wales (English version; a Welsh version is also available). Carries results of the 1999 elections to the NAW.
http://www.ni-assembly.gov.uk; website of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Carries the names of those elected to the Assembly.
http://www.official-documents.co.uk; carries text of every Act of Parliament and regulation under the sun (being extended to carry those published before the Internet Age; currently reaches back to 1988).
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/other_activities/pbc.asp; joint website of the English and Welsh Parliamentary Boundary Commissions. Included as the English Commission has already started its next general review of constituency boundaries, due to be published in 2005. (The Scottish and Northern Irish commissions do not seem to have websites.)
http://www.electoralcommission.gov.uk; website of the Electoral Commission. If you can get past the front page, which seems to have been designed as a homage to monitors which do not work properly, you will find here a reincarnation of the Register of Political Parties, which was previously at www.party-register.gov.uk, but no longer (the link still works, but the list is not being updated any more). The Electoral Commission now have responsibility for this (under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which is so strange it cannot even spell Referenda correctly). They carry full 2001 election results, taken from their report on that election (currently available in the shops for £25).
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk; website of the Scottish Parliament. Carries election results (BUT NOT by-election results - this is important) and limited information about members.
http://www.open.gov.uk/index/orgindex.htm; links to every British Government page under the sun. Government-watchers will spend many happy hours here.
http://www.parliament.uk; the homepage of the British Parliament. Carries information about members and by-election results.
Last updated 14 VIIber 2001