The Representative Audit of Britain

英国代表审计将对议会候选人的研究放在一个保护伞下，提供了一个独特的数据集，将帮助我们回答有关当代英国议会民主状况的一些最紧迫的问题。公共话语经常回到英国日益增长的政治阶层，这似乎是从社会主流中删除，自我延续和精英（典型的是关于康沃尔语馅饼增值税的争吵，每日邮报2012年3月27日）。然而，几乎没有数据来系统地检验这些说法。英国代表性审计将包括有关2015年英国大选候选人背景的全面信息，包括以前的职业，政治经验，生物性别，父母状况，种族，宗教，年龄，当地联系，教育，党员长度以及可能的以前的选择/选举。有关候选人的信息将与选区数据相结合，如边缘化、各政党在当前和以往大选中的得票率、投票率以及人口普查数据产生的经济和社会指标。这个综合数据集将是分析谁被选中和谁当选的有力工具，使我们能够检查某些群体-例如工人阶级，黑人和少数民族个人或妇女-是否更有可能在无法赢得的席位或拥有大量工人阶级或黑人和少数民族社区的地方被选中。然而，这些最重要的发现可能掩盖了可以使用这些数据检查的更微妙的过程。例如：具有地方政治或国家政治经验的候选人是否会被选为最佳席位？这些趋势是否因政党而异？作为地方议员的经历是促进还是阻碍了政治生涯？国会议员的研究员和特别顾问的崛起在多大程度上接管了政治招聘的过程，在可赢得席位的候选人比其他人更有可能有这种经验？这些因素是否相互作用，共同创造了一个“典型”的成功候选人？还是新闻媒体过度渲染了这种刻板印象？我们将把联合收割机的社会人口和选举数据与2015年候选人调查的态度数据结合起来。近年来，对议员和候选人调查的答复率急剧下降，可能是由于调查的扩散和在线调查方法的出现。我们的目标是通过双管齐下的战略最大限度地提高响应率。首先，从政党和媒体网站、政党线人以及对候选人的采访中收集尽可能多的信息，以保持态度措施的调查。第二，通过与候选人比较研究和英国代表性研究合作，我们将减少对候选人进行调查的次数。将这些力量与英国选举研究相结合，也将使我们能够在全国范围内考虑英国候选人，分析随着时间的推移而发生的变化，并进行精英-大众比较。这些数据将使我们能够回答有关思想在政治中的代表性的问题;评估候选人和议员在多大程度上分享选民的意识形态观点，以及这是否因人口的亚群体和政党而异。

The Representative Audit of Britain brings research on parliamentary candidates together under one umbrella, providing a unique dataset that will help us answer some of the most pressing questions about the state of contemporary British parliamentary democracy. Public discourse frequently returns to the perceived growing political class in Britain, which is seemingly removed from the mainstream of society, self-perpetuating and elitist (typified by the row about VAT on Cornish Pasties, Daily Mail 27/03/2012). However, there is little in the way of data to systematically test these claims. The Representative Audit of Britain will include comprehensive information about the backgrounds of candidates standing in the 2015 British general election, including previous occupation, political experience, biological sex, parental status, ethnicity, religion, age, local connections, education, length of party membership and where possible previous selections/elections. The information about candidates will be combined with constituency data, such as marginality, percentage vote for each party in the current and previous general elections, turnout and economic and social indicators generated from census data. This combined dataset will be a powerful tool for analysing who gets selected and who gets elected, permitting us to examine whether certain groups--e.g. working-class people, BME individuals or women--are more likely to be selected in unwinnable seats or places with large working-class or Black and Minority Ethnic communities. However, these top-line findings may mask more subtle processes that can be examined using this data. For example: Do candidates with local political or national political experience get selected for the best seats? Do these trends vary by party? Does experience as a local councillor facilitate or hinder a political career? To what extent has the rise of the MP's researcher and the special advisor taken over the processes of political recruitment and are candidates in winnable seats more likely to have this experience than others? Do the factors interact together to create a 'typical' successful candidate? Or is this stereotype over-played by the news media? We will combine socio-demographic and electoral data with attitudinal data from a survey of 2015 candidates. In recent years there has been a sharp decline in response rates to surveys of MPs and candidates, likely due to the proliferation of surveys and advent of online survey methods. We aim to maximize response rates via a two-prong strategy. First, to gather as much information as possible from party and media websites, party informants and interviews with candidates keeping the surveys for attitudinal measures. Second, by joining forces with the Comparative Candidate Study and British Representation Study, we will reduce the number of times candidates are surveyed. Combining forces with these and the British Election Study will also allow us to consider UK candidates cross-nationally, analyse change over time and make elite-mass comparisons. The data will allow us to answer questions about the representation of ideas in politics; assessing to what extent candidates and MPs share the ideological perspectives of the electorate and whether this varies by sub-groups of the population and by political party.