The Representative Audit of Britain

《英国代表审计》将对议会候选人的研究集中在一起，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。在英国，公共话语经常回归到不断增长的政治阶层，他们似乎脱离了社会主流，自我延续和精英主义（典型的是关于康沃尔馅饼增值税的争吵，每日邮报27/03/2012）。然而，几乎没有数据可以系统地验证这些说法。英国代表审计将包括2015年英国大选候选人的全面背景信息，包括以前的职业、政治经历、生物学性别、父母身份、种族、宗教、年龄、当地关系、教育程度、政党成员时间，以及可能的以前的选择/选举。候选人的信息将与选区数据相结合，如边际性、各政党在本届和往届大选中的得票率、投票率以及从人口普查数据中得出的经济和社会指标。这个组合的数据集将是一个强大的工具，用于分析谁被选中，谁当选，允许我们检查某些群体是否——例如；工人阶级、少数族裔或女性——更有可能被选为无法获胜的席位，或者有大量工人阶级、黑人和少数族裔社区的地方。然而，这些最重要的发现可能掩盖了使用这些数据可以检查的更微妙的过程。例如：有地方政治或国家政治经验的候选人会被选为最好的席位吗？这些趋势因党派而异吗？当地方议员的经历对政治生涯是有利还是不利？国会议员研究员和特别顾问的崛起在多大程度上接管了政治招募的过程？获得可赢得席位的候选人是否比其他人更有可能拥有这种经历？这些因素是否相互作用才能造就一个“典型的”成功候选人？或者这种刻板印象被新闻媒体夸大了？我们将把社会人口统计和选举数据与2015年候选人调查的态度数据结合起来。近年来，对议员和候选人的调查回复率急剧下降，这可能是由于调查的激增和在线调查方法的出现。我们的目标是通过双管齐下的策略来最大化响应率。首先，从党和媒体网站、党的线人和对候选人的采访中收集尽可能多的信息，以保持对态度的调查。第二，通过与比较候选人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。将这些因素与《英国选举研究》结合起来，还将使我们能够考虑跨国家的英国候选人，分析长期变化，并进行精英与大众的比较。这些数据将使我们能够回答有关思想在政治中的表现的问题；评估候选人和国会议员在多大程度上认同选民的意识形态观点，以及这是否因人口的子群体和政党而异。

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.