Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
An extensive relational database, developed for both teaching and research purposes over a period of some 25 years by Professor Stuart Ball and Dr Graham Smith in the History department at Leicester University, at first on an Ingres system and since 2001 on SQL Server. Its core is a near-comprehensive digital version of the standard compilation of British election results published by F. W. S. Craig. The transcription aims to be virtually complete, covering all general elections and by-elections with the exception only of Irish and university seats, and including full candidate details for each contest as well as the party results. The database began as part of the department's pioneering Computing for Historians programme, which from 1989 onwards introduced Leicester History undergraduates to digital research methods through a mandatory database element in the degree structure. In this context it proved to be a versatile basis for more than 120 student finals projects. As a research database it was significantly enhanced from 2008 with our development of a system for correlating parliamentary constituencies with the different geographical units used by the census (England and Wales) and hence constructing socio-economic constituency profiles, so opening up a line of research from which historians have in the past been deterred by the difficulty of mapping constituencies on to census areas. This innovative approach provided the basis for the electoral analyses in Professor Ball's award-winning book Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918-1945 (Oxford UP, 2013), making the database an important resource for anyone wishing to replicate or extend that research.
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For each electoral contest, the electoral data includes: the constituency code assigned by Craig, the constituency name, type and other details, the election date and type (and for by-elections the cause), the number of electors and percentage turnout, the party, name and title of each candidate, the votes scored by each candidate, and the majority of the winning candidate (and in two-seat constituencies of the second successful candidate). For each constituency, the socio-economic constituency profiles include the following, with separate figures for males and females in most cases: population, number of electors, persons per acre, persons per room, population aged 14+, number aged 14+ who are 'occupied' (i.e. who are in occupations although not necessarily at the time in work), number aged 14+ who are retired or 'unoccupied' (e.g. housewives), number 'out of work' (i.e. unemployed), the number in each of the 31 occupation 'orders' (e.g. Fishing, Agriculture, Mining and Quarrying, etc.), the numbers in 6 more specific categories (e.g. Railways, Shopkeepers, Domestic Service), and the numbers in 8 composite categories put together for our research (e.g. Textiles and Clothing, Construction, Light Industry, Middle Class). The profiles are based on the 1931 census of England and Wales. An additional table provides data relating to the linkage of constituencies with Local Government Districts, including weightings used for calculation of the constituency profiles.
No sampling (total universe)
Transcription of existing materials
