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Eoghan Kelly

@eoghanly.bsky.social

110 followers 150 following 25 posts

Politics PhD and Postdoctoral Assistant at the University of Edinburgh. Interested in elections and political behaviour. Founder of DevolvedElections.co.uk & IrishElections.ie

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 3

Officially a Doctor of Politics for my work looking at how devolved elections have impacted party systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · 1d

We've launched a new way of understanding polling error in Wales.

We run the Senedd election 1000x with realistic polling errors and regionalised swings.

It tracks parties, individual seats and ideologies.

We'll update it regularly to show changes.

👉 www.devolvedelections.co.uk/wales-projects

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · 3d

We also provide seat ranges for all Unionists, Nationalists and Others to see which bloc is likely to come out ahead.

We use a normal distribution of polling errors and add a bit of randomisation to constituency swings.

It means that most outcomes are sensible, but some require huge misses.

Reposted by Eoghan Kelly

Ireland Election Projections @irishelection.bsky.social · 28d

We've introduced an Irish Presidential Election projection!

Enter your first preferences and play with their transfer freindliness to project a winner.

irishelections.ie/presidential/

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Aug 27

We've added a new Margin of Error preset to our Northern Ireland projection!

It creates random votes share near the Nowcast so you can see what could happen with a normal polling miss.

Just click it again for a different scenario.

devolvedelections.co.uk/northern-ire...

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Aug 16

We tested how a Single NI Unionist Party *could* do at the next election.

DUP + UUP + TUV: 38
A Unified Party: 38

devolvedelections.co.uk/blog/single-...

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Ireland Election Projections @irishelection.bsky.social · Aug 3

A projection based on the Ireland Thinks poll for @independent.ie:

🟩 Fianna Fáil — 44 Seats
☘️ Sinn Féin — 40
⭐ Fine Gael — 38
🟪 Social Democrats — 19
💬 Independent — 11
🌹 Labour — 10
🟢 Independent Ireland — 7
🌳 Aontú — 2
✊ PBP-S — 2
⚪ Other — 1

irishelections.ie/general/

Irish Election Projections

Create and share your own Irish election projections. Interactive, educational, and up-to-date!

irishelections.ie

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Jul 31

The latest @scotvoting.bsky.social / @yougov.co.uk poll for the next Holyrood election:

🎗️ SNP — 58
🌹 Lab — 24
🌳 Con — 8
🌱 GP — 10
🐤 LD — 10
➡️ Ref — 19
🔵 Alba — 0
⚪ Other — 0

devolvedelections.co.uk/scotland/

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 31

It's largely a hangover from the previous two party system.

Labour never fully replace the Liberals as the main challenger to the Tories in some of the more rural and remote areas.

Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 29

Our first Nowcast:

🟩 Fianna Fáil — 44 Seats
☘️ Sinn Féin — 43
⭐ Fine Gael — 38
🟪 Social Democrats — 19
🌹 Labour — 11
💬 Independent — 8
🟢 Independent Ireland — 6
🌳 Aontú — 3
✊ PBP-S — 2

From @irishelection.bsky.social

Ireland Election Projections @irishelection.bsky.social · Jul 29

🗳️🇮🇪Who’s Winning? We Actually Have the Data.

We’ve launched irishelections.ie — the place where Irish election projections make sense.
📊 Real-time seat forecasts
📈 Constituency breakdowns
🤓 Politics, but with fewer opinions and more numbers

👉 irishelections.ie

Irish Election Projections

Create and share your own Irish election projections. Interactive, educational, and up-to-date!

irishelections.ie

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Jul 25

Following the announcement of 'Your Party' yesterday we've started adding them to our projection. It's not live yet but here are some early findings.

Using ratios from some hypotheticals polls - Your Party would enter the Senedd (8 seats) and Holyrood (2) next year.

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 25

Congrats!

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APPG for Fair Elections @appgfairelections.bsky.social · Jul 17

💥 The Government has just published its proposals for electoral reforms

💬 Statement from our Chair, @alexsobel.co.uk: "Today’s proposals are a welcome step towards cleaner, fairer and more trusted elections, but one critical issue remains unresolved: the voting system itself."

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Jul 17

We're concerned that the position of 16 year olds in NI Assembly elections in all this is unclear.

It's a big enough change that they should say it clearly, and a big enough omission to also say it clearly.

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 17

We don't put much faith in avowed intentions over here.

Alliance and Sinn Féin are the only two parties to tweet about it and neither knows if it applies to the Assembly.

sinnfein.ie/news/british...

www.allianceparty.org/votes_at_16_...

British government must ensure 16 and 17 year olds can vote in 2027 elections - Baker - Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin MLA Danny Baker has welcomed news that the British government is to extend the right to vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. The party’s spokesperson for children and young people said: “Empowering ...

sinnfein.ie

Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 17

Also, whoever wrote this obviously never tried to use one to get into a pub in Enniskillen.

Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 17

That was my reading of it too, but they don't expressly say they're changing it and I haven't seen any NI parties or media mention the change.

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Graham Simpson @grahambs.bsky.social · Jul 13

“The point about PR isn't that it favours one party or another. In the unlikely event that most people choose a populist party we'd get a populist government. What PR will not do - and FPTP very much would - is to hand 100% government control to a party that most people voted against” Andy Beck MVM

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Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Jul 11

Our projection of the latest Beaufort Research's Senedd poll for @nation.cymru :
Lab — 30 Seats
Ref — 29
PC — 22
Con — 10
LD — 2
GP — 3

devolvedelections.co.uk/wales/

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Conor J. Kelly @conorjkelly.bsky.social · Jul 11

If this happened in any other part of the UK or the island of Ireland, people would rightfully go to prison for it.

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 5

The formation of the NI Executive is one of NI's oddest quirks.

This obeys all the rules - and there a lot of them - to make it easy to understand and accurate.

Devolved Election Projections @devolvedelections.bsky.social · Jul 5

🚨 We've introduced a new tool which shows you how the Northern Ireland Executive is formed.

Just pick your justice minister, your opposition (if any), and press play!

👉 devolvedelections.co.uk/northern-ireland/ 👈

Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 4

Wales:

Down 17% and 23 seats.

They're now in third, behind both Plaid Cymru & Reform.

Plaid have almost doubled their vote share (14->27%), Reform are up 10%

2024 was bad for the Tories, but its only gotten worse (18->13%).

Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 4

Scotland:
Down 15% and 32 seats, dropping from first to second

The Greens, SNP and Reform have eaten into their support, hile the Tories have stayed flat.

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 4

1 year ago today Labour swept to power. They won a huge majority of seats with an unremarkable share

I've put last year's results into our projection to see how Labour *could* have done if GE24 results had played out at the devolved tier in Scotland & Wales vs how they're doing now

It's not pretty

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Lawrence McKay @lawrencemckay.bsky.social · Jul 3

Who wants to see how 81 different census variables correlate with this May's local election results? Of course you do:

www.datawrapper.de/_/avuui/?v=4

Local elections 2025: aggregate-level correlations | Created with Datawrapper

Pearson correlation coefficients between aggregate-level census data and the 2025 local election vote share of each party, for the electoral ward or County Electoral District.

www.datawrapper.de

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Eoghan Kelly @eoghanly.bsky.social · Jul 3

Officially a Doctor of Politics for my work looking at how devolved elections have impacted party systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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