Academic Profile

People Feature

Jane Green FAcSS FAAAS

Professorial Fellow
Professor of Political Science and British Politics

Research interests: political accountability, understanding of political and economic and other policy shocks; survey measurement; British elections.

I am the Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre, Co-Director of the British Election Study, President of the British Polling Council, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Elections Analyst for ITV News and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull.

I am interested in supervising PhD students working with British Election Study data, other related political/attitudinal/election study data, projects on political accountability, economics and voting - in particular economic insecurity and wealth - and political attitudes, gender, and political representation and elections more broadly. I supervise comparative projects that fall into the above substantive areas. I'm particularly interested in research with a clear social benefit.

I am passionate about ensuring greater representation and providing mentoring for under-represented groups. 

My research focuses on the link between what governments do (policy outcomes, the economy, political competition) and how people respond to them.

I am a co-author (with the British Election Study team), of 'Electoral Realignment: How Brexit Re-Shaped British Elections' (forthcoming with Oxford University Press), where we conduct an in-depth explanation of realignments and examination of the Brexit realignment in over-time context. I am also a co-author of 'Electoral Shocks: Understanding the Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World', 2020, OUP. This book explains how the British party system destabilized due to the combination of electoral shocks and over time increases in underlying electoral volatility.

With Will Jennings I authored 'The Politics of Competence: Parties, Public Opinion and Voters', CUP, 2017. There we show how shocks cause substantial changes to party policy reputations, reveal how voters generalise competence assessments across the policy agenda, and demonstrate how governments suffer costs of ruling due to predictable over-time dynamics in the attribution of blame.

I am working on a number of projects to understand the relationship between cultural and economic drivers of political attitudes, how economic insecurity and a lack of economic insurance shapes political attitudes, including across generations, and understanding education and age gaps in vote choice.

I take an active role in the analysis of British politics and elections and have served as ITV News Election Analyst in the 2015 general election, 2016 EU referendum, 2016 US presidential election, 2017 British general election, 2019 British general election, 2024 British general election and the 2020 US presidential election. I have also provided analysis for the BBC; the BBC Radio 4 2019 European Elections results programme, BBC television 2014 local elections results programme, numerous BBC Breakfast appearances, interviews for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the World at One, the Today Programme, Westminster Hour, Woman's Hour, and the 2010 and 2005 BBC World Service radio election night programmes.

In 2023 I received (with BES colleagues) the inaugural Pippa Norris Prize from the Political Studies Association for a research team that has made an outstanding contribution to advancing knowledge in Political Studies, and I was also winner in 2023 of the Department of Politics and International Relations Impact Leader Award, recognising a significant track record of achieving impact or a commitment to collaboration and engaged research. I received the Political Studies Association ‘Research Communicator of the Year’ award in 2015. 

I served on the Market Research Society and British Polling Council independent inquiry into the 2015 opinion polls and have given evidence to committees in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. I am an Affiliate at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science and an editorial member of Comparative Political Studies. I was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, 2016, and at the University of California at Berkeley in 2007. I received my DPhil from Nuffield College in 2007.

Jane Green FAcSS FAAAS

Publications

In progress

Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Geoffrey Evans, Jon Mellon, Christopher Prosser. Electoral Realignment: How Brexit Re-Shaped British Elections. Oxford University Press (under contract).

Zack Grant, Jane Green and Geoffrey Evans. Family Matters: How Concerns about the Financial Wellbeing of Younger Relatives Shape the Political Preferences of Older Adults.

Zack Grant, Jane Green and Geoffrey Evans. Care Risks: How Concerns about Having to Look After Older Family Members Increase Support for Government Spending on the Retired

Jane Green and Marta Miori. The Most Disproportionate UK Election: 2024 - How the UK Labour Party Doubled its Seat Share with a 1.6 point Increase in Vote Share

Books 

Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Geoffrey Evans, Jonathan Mellon, Christopher Prosser, Hermann Schmitt and Cees van der Eijk. (2019). Electoral Shocks: Understanding the Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World. Oxford University Press. 

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2017). ‘The Politics of Competence: Parties, Public Opinion and Voters’. Cambridge University Press.

Wring, Dominic, Jane Green, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson, Eds., (2007) ‘Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005’. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Articles and chapters 

Alex Yeandle, Jane Green and Tiphaine Le Corre. Economic hardship and support for redistribution: synthesizing five themes in the literature. Forthcoming, Political Studies Review.

Jane Green, Will Jennings, Lawrence McKay and Gerry Stoker. 2024. Connecting Local Economic Decline to the Politics of Geographic Discontent: The Missing Link of Perceptions. Political Behavior.

Jane Green, Geoffrey Evans and Daniel Snow. The Covid-19 Pandemic in Britain: A Competence Shock and its Electoral Consequences. Forthcoming, Political Studies

Jane Green and Raluca Pahontu. (2024) ‘Mind the Gap. Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit’. British Journal of Political Science.

Edward Fieldhouse, Geoffrey Evans, Jane Green, Jonathan Mellon, Christopher Prosser and Jack Bailey. 2023. Volatility, Realignment, and Electoral Shocks: Brexit and the UK General Election of 2019. PS: Political Science & Politics

Geoffrey Evans, Roosmarijn De Geus and Jane Green. 2023. Boris Johnson to the Rescue?: How the Conservatives won the radical right vote in the 2019 general election. Political Studies.  

Roosmarijn De Geus and Jane Green. 2022. Attention! The Meanings of Attention to Politics in Surveys. Electoral Studies.

Jane Green and Rosalind Shorrocks. (Early online view) The Gender Backlash in the Vote for Brexit. Political Behavior

Jane Green. (2021) 2019: A Critical Election? In Nicholas Allen and John Bartle., Eds. Britain at the Polls, 2019. Manchester University Press.

Jane Green, Timothy Hellwig and Edward Fieldhouse. 2021. 'Who Gets What: The Economy, Relative Gains, and Brexit'. British Journal of Political Science.

Christopher Prosser, Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Jonathan Mellon and Geoffrey Evans. (2020) ‘Tremors but no Youthquake. Measuring changes in the age and turnout gradients in the 2015 and 2017 British General Elections’. Electoral Studies. Vol. 64: 102-129.

Jonathan Mellon, Geoffrey Evans, Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, and Christopher Prosser (2018) ‘Brexit or Corbyn? Campaign and Inter-election Vote Switching in the 2017 UK General Election’. Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 71 (4): 719-737.

Patrick Sturgis, Jouni Kuha, Nick Baker, Stephen Fisher, Jane Green, Will Jennings, Benjamin Lauderdale, and Patten Smith (2017) ‘An Assessment of the Causes of the Errors in the 2015 UK General Election Opinion Polls’. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society – Series A.

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2017) ‘Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How issue ownership shapes executive and legislative agendas’. British Journal of Political Science. 1–24. 

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2017) ‘Valence’, in Kai Arzheimer, Jocelyn Evans and Michael Lewis-Beck., Eds. The SAGE Handbook of Electoral Behavior v2, pp.538–560. London: Sage.

Jane Green and Chris Prosser (2016) ‘Party System Fragmentation and Single-Party Government: The British General Election of 2015’. West European Politics, Vol. 39(6): 1299–1310.

Jane Green (2015) ‘Party and Voter Incentives at the Crowded Centre of British Politics’, Party Politics, Vol. 21(1): 80–99.

James Adams, Jane Green and Caitlin Milazzo (2012) ‘Who Moves? Elite and Mass Depolarization in Britain, 1987 – 2001’, Electoral Studies, Vol. 31(4): 643–655.

Caitlin Milazzo, James Adams and Jane Green (2012) ‘Are Voter Decision Rules Endogenous to Parties’ Policy Strategies? A Model with Applications to Mass Depolarization in Post-Thatcher Britain’, Journal of Politics, Vol. 74(1): 262–276.

James Adams, Jane Green and Caitlin Milazzo (2012) ‘Has the British Public Depolarized Along with Political Elites? An American Perspective on British Public Opinion’. Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 45(4): 507–530.

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2012) ‘Valence as Macro-Competence: An Analysis of Mood in Party Competence Evaluations in the U.K.’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42(2): 311–343. 

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2012) ‘The Dynamics of Issue Competence and Vote Choice for Parties in and Out of Power’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 51(4): 469–503. 

Jane Green (2011) ‘A Test of Core Vote Theories: The British Conservatives, 1997 – 2005’. British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41(4): 667–688.

Jane Green (2010) ‘Strategic Recovery? The Conservatives under David Cameron’. Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 63(4): 667–688.

- - Jane Green (2010) ‘Strategic Recovery? The Conservatives under David Cameron’. In Andrew Geddes and Jonathon Tonge., Eds. Britain Votes 2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.85–106.

Jane Green (2010) ‘Points of Intersection between Experiments and Quasi-Experiments’. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 628(1): 97–111.

Jane Green and Sara B. Hobolt (2008) ‘Owning the Issue Agenda: Explaining Party Strategies in British General Election Campaigns’. Electoral Studies, Vol. 27(3): 460–476. 

Jane Green (2007) ‘When Parties and Voters Agree: Valence Issues and Party Competition’. Political Studies, Vol. 55(3): 629–655.

Jane Green (2007) ‘The Lessons of the 2005 General Election Campaign’ in Dominic Wring, Jane Green, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson., Eds., Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Philip Cowley and Jane Green (2005) ‘New Leaders, Same Problems: The Conservatives’, in Andrew Geddes and Jonathon Tonge., Eds. (2005) Britain Decides: The British General Election of 2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jane Green (2005) ‘Conservative Party Rationality: Learning the Lessons from the Last Election for the Next’. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Vol. 15(1): 111–127.

Other: in print

Jane Green (2019) ‘It’s all relative: why it matters who is doing better than whom’, in ‘Sex, Lies and Politics: The Secret Influences That Drive our Political Choices’, eds. P. Cowley & R. Ford. Biteback Publishing.

Jane Green (2017) ‘A Year On, Brexit Brings Lessons in Uncertainty’. In Nature (International Weekly Journal of Science), Vol. 546, pp.453, 22 June 2017.

Jane Green (2016) 'More Similar Than You Think: Parallel Publics'. In Phillip Cowley and Robert Ford., Eds. Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box II. Biteback publishing.

Jane Green (2016) ‘What Explains the Failure of ‘Project Fear’?’. In Dan Jackson, Einar Thorsen and Dominic Wring., Eds. EU Referendum Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign.

Jane Green and Chris Prosser (2015) 'Learning the Right Lessons from Labour's 2015 Defeat.' Juncture (Journal of the Institute for Public Policy Research) Vol. 2(2), August.

Patrick Sturgis, Nick Baker, Mario Callegaro, Stephen Fisher, Jane Green, Will Jennings, Jouni Kuha, Ben Lauderdale, Patten Smith (2016) ‘Report of the Inquiry into the 2015 British general election opinion polls’. Market Research Society.

Jane Green (2012) ‘Voting Behaviour: How Important is Issue Voting?’ Politics Review. November.

Jane Green (2011) Review of Clarke, Harold., David Sanders, Marianne Stewart and Paul Whiteley (2009) ‘Performance Politics and the British Voter’. In Perspectives on Politics 10(2): 511–513.

Jane Green (2010) ‘Can Parties Respond Well to Defeat?’ Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, Vol. 18 (3/4): 47–54.

Jane Green (2006) Review of Aspinwall, Mark (2004) ‘Rethinking Britain and Europe: Plurality election, party management and British policy on European integration’. Party Politics 12(4).