British Local Elections Database

The British Local Elections Database (BLED) at the UK Data Archive is a unique resource covering more than 200,000 local election results in England, Wales and Scotland over the period from 1889-2002. Nowhere else are results from individual local authorities centrally collated or made available for ready download, analysis and linkage with other data sources.

The Database has proved a popular research tool with in excess of 200 downloads (statistics supplied by UK Data Archive, August 2013) and it has been 'the second most popular study in the History Data Service collection' (email from Richard Deswarte, Head of the History Data Service, UK Data Archive, October 2009).

The main objective of the current project is simply to add more than 75,000 recent results from 2003-2015 to the existing database. In addition, each electoral ward will be provided with an identifier enabling it to be matched with both 2011 census output and the 2010/2015 parliamentary constituency of which it forms a part.

The project also aims to meet a desire for easier public access to the historical record of local election results. This will be achieved by publishing summary and ward results data for each year as well as an electoral history of each local authority since at least 1973. Access will primarily be through the University of Plymouth's website, in particular the pages maintained by the investigators under the auspices of the University's Elections Centre -see www.plymouth.ac.uk/elections.

Who will benefit from the research? It is clear from the record of users and downloads that this resource has a currency beyond that of political scientists studying elections. For example, economists, geographers, historians, and sociologists have all used it to provide key, but otherwise hard or impossible to access data for their analyses on a range of topics including the siting of supermarkets, access to services and deprivation, detailed studies of one place or period of time in history, and the provision and impact of public housing.

Outside academia, a variety of public bodies including the House of Commons Library, the Electoral Commission, and the Local Government Association use such data both to inform their own memberships and to assist with policy analyses. The data are also used by political actors and journalists to enhance public understanding of elections and election results through being able to compare present trends with past events, and by opinion polling companies to assist in sample design and checking.

Crucially, the proposed web-based platform will also provide interested members of the general public (including councillors and local candidates) with ready access to this information for the first time.

How will they benefit from this research? A refreshed database and new internet platform is likely to increase the amount of use and to broaden the type of user. This will improve the intelligence on which those listed above base their various analyses and potentially enhance the quality of public information and debate.